Minneapolis theater company abruptly postpones cursed Shakespearean tragedy

Just days away from opening its latest show, a Minneapolis theater company has pushed back its production.

Rough Magic Performance Company has postponed its staging of “The Macbeths,” an all-female version of Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy “Macbeth,” because an actor had to step away for personal reasons.

On Friday, the slated opening of the three-week run, the company will now host “A Cursed Conversation and Celebration,” a discussion and party at Minneapolis’ Center for Performing Arts.

The event will bring together the show’s creative team and audience members to commiserate and celebrate, co-artistic director Catherine Johnson Justice said.

“We’ve rented the space, and it’s all paid for, so we might as well make lemonade,” she added.

Ticketholders to “The Macbeths” have a choice of getting a refund, going to Friday’s forum or transferring their tickets to a future date.

Rough Magic plans to stage the show in the fall at a new venue. The company has already signed up most of the creative team and cast for the show, which will be directed by Heidi Batz Rogers.

Justice said that because her company raises funds to cover productions ahead of time, the earnings from the play go to seed the next work. Even so, Rough Magic will have to eat a significant part of the $36,000 in production costs.

Often produced at major theaters across the world, including Minneapolis’ Guthrie, “Macbeth” has a centuries-long reputation for being accursed, owing in part to the supposedly real incantations of the witches in the play. Shakespeare is reputed to have stepped in on opening night in 1606 to play Lady Macbeth because the actor depicting that role suddenly died.

In 1947, actor Harold Norman, who was playing the title character, was killed onstage at the Oldham theater in Manchester, England, during a battle scene after being stabbed with a real dagger.

And in 1988, when an 82-year-old man fell to his death from a top balcony at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House during the second intermission of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Macbeth,” the rest of the four-hour opera was canceled.

But the biggest and most tragic event around the play happened on May 10, 1849, in New York when some two dozen people were killed in the Astor Place Riot. The tragedy was triggered by competition between two virulently competitive actors playing Macbeth on the same night just blocks away from each other — American Edwin Forrest, who was starring at the Broadway Theater, and Englishman William Charles Macready, who was at the Astor Place Theatre.

A crowd of 10,000 gathered by the Astor Place Opera House and the militia was called out to quell the disturbance. Most of those killed were working-class theater lovers who died at the hands of authorities.

To counter the curse, theater professionals have developed a series of practices, including not uttering the name of the play inside a playhouse. Instead, they refer to “Macbeth” as “The Scottish Play.” And if someone does say the name by mistake, there’s a ritual that involves leaving the building, turning around and spitting.

But Rough Magic did not believe in or honor any of those superstitions, Justice said.

In fact, the producers, creative team and actors made light of it all, starting with scheduling the opening on Friday the 13th to amplify the spooky vibes. Actors also repeatedly said the name of the work out loud during rehearsals.

“The curse is real — we’re no longer laughing,” Justice said. “When we do it again, we might have to do a lot of spitting.”