Musings on theatre and superstition

As I sit here with my laptop in my home office reflecting on the past few months and the time that has passed since my last editorial I am stunned at how much time has flown over the past year! I am happy to announce that I have now completed my undergraduate studies at Victoria University, with my Bachelor of Arts with a double major in English Literature and Religious Studies. Does that make me a theologian as well as ESOL (English speakers of other languages) teacher and theatre practitioner?

I am currently preparing for the shift into the work-force as well as graduating in May. For some in Wellington who know me well, they know that my degree has been a long time coming and my life has changed a lot over the seven year period. The changes I have noticed in my own life are pretty significant, including the happy news of an upcoming hitching of two of our own committee members - Daniel Ryan and I on a stage this coming September!

Speaking of the stage I have been watching and working at a lot of theatre in Wellington, including the amazing season that has recently wrapped up of Summer Shakespeare Wellington's wheely good version of All's Well That Ends Well. After working with Summer Shakespeare Wellington over the past three summers I have been left wondering how I can be so skeptically minded of those who claim to have powers like psychics and I especially question Sensing Murder as a TV show... yet put me into a theatre and I follow the laws of the theatre with following a variety of theatre superstitions such as avoiding saying the name of the Scottish Play in a theatre, watching out of the ghost of Thespis by ensuring we have one night off per week with the theatre left empty and leaving a ghost light on the stage all night…

“The superstitious have various justifications for the ghost light in relation to the supernatural. A popular theatrical superstition holds that every theater has a ghost, and some theaters have traditions to appease ghosts that reach far back into their history. Similar superstitions hold that ghost lights provide opportunities for ghosts to perform onstage, thus appeasing them and preventing them from cursing the theater or sabotaging the set or production. This is also used to explain the traditional one day a week that theaters are closed.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostlight(theatre)

What happened to the journal?

No doubt you've noticed the lack of NZ Skeptic journals over the past year. Unfortunately our previous editor had to step down because of other commitments.

We have managed to pull this issue together, very late, but we are actively looking for a new editor who would be willing to take the role on, with help and support from the committee.

Know anyone? Please get in touch!