Most American theaters have a ‘ghost light’ which is switched on when everyone leaves for the night. Usually a single bare light bulb on a stand, it remains lit until the next day.
Just one of the known rituals associated with the theater. The anxiety associated with performance has been the birth superstitions like saying break-a-leg rather than good-luck.
Evidently, in the days of early vaudeville, the producers would book more performers than could possibly perform in the given time of the show – since “bad” acts could be pulled before their completion… so, in order to insure that the show didn’t start paying people who don’t actually perform, there was a general policy that a performer did NOT get paid unless they actually performed on-stage. So the phrase “break a leg” referred to breaking the visual plane of the legs that lined the side of the stage.
Today known as the Palace Theater in London it was originally the Royal English Opera House – opera for the royals.
Adelphi theater intentionally built for the public in an era, 1809, when theater was a luxury of the elite.
Bend the knee, break the leg means taking a bow due to an excellent performance.
No mirrors, peacock feathers or use of the number 13.
