Macbeth Betrayal in wow

“Let me entertain you
Let me see you smile”
Gypsy

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Macbeth Betrayal in Wow

We all have been running the LFR. We have all seen the players who pop Hero on the trash, just be to jerks. And we have all seen the response:

“It is only the LFR, lol”.

Our irritation can run high at that moment. For me, it is not so much that we have a troll in the group; it is that we have a non-gamer in the group. I look at them as people who don’t like syrup on their pancakes; fine, eat your pancakes that way but it is so much better with warm maple syrup.

Let me set the frame work using the grand example: Theater.

Theater goes back into the beginning of mankind. From the Medicine Man acting out the kill on the beast, dancing around the fire in a cave to the Greek Amphitheaters to the pageantry of the opening of the Olympic Ceremonies — Theater has spanned all activities of our civilization.

Theater with quotes, “theater” also comes with traditions and superstitions that add flavor, depth and professionalism: the stage.

Like WoW having its own language with oddities like DPS which is a terrible name for a trained killer (damage per second) or LFR, LFG, ninja loot, pwn; so too does the Theater with Break a Leg for good luck.

The Theater has some great stuff. The side masking on the stage, sometimes called wings, are called Torms. You can see them labeled in architect’s drawings for the design of the stage. Torm is short for Tormentor. During Vaudeville and Burlesque, the strippers would hide behind fans and take off their clothes. The final step was to pull that side curtain in front of their bodies and dangle their last piece. The strippers would “torment” the audience and so the legs or wings are called Torms. The top masking, the borders, are called Teasers!

Sailors have often been hired as stagehands. Their skill in making sails on boats go up and down are perfect for flying out drops (painted scenes for a background). The language in the theater has been impacted; the stage is often called “the deck”. The knots commonplace in the theater, bowlines and clove hitches, are sailing knots.

It is bad luck to whistle on the stage! Clearly this is superstition but its history goes back to a real thing. Quietly backstage, the Sailors would use whistle calls up to the rafters to get the scenery to move on cue; whistle calls they learned to communicate in high winds on the sea. It could be very back luck then to whistle on stage and find that you called for a sand bag to come flying down on your head!

One of the more fun superstitions is that if you are doing Macbeth on the stage, it is very bad luck to say the name of the play. I saw Patrick Stewart on a talk show refer to it as That Scottish Play, he refused to invoke the curse. Knowing this superstition makes us insiders and true Theater People.

The reason? This superstition is so old that the start is lost in time. My favorite is that in Act II, Shakespeare had the witches incantation “oil boil and trouble”. The story goes that he stole it from real witches and they cursed the play forever! Less fun is that so many failing theater troupes tried to use a very popular play to bail themselves out and so many companies closed while playing Macbeth.

Some Theater People take the Macbeth curse very seriously. I have heard that if you were to utter Macbeth in the theater, even by mistake, that the company will make you go outside — and then knock on the door and ask permission to come back in.

“It is only a superstition, lol”

To yell Macbeth in the Theater to show distain for a superstition also shows distain for the breadth and depth and history of this crazy business we call Show. To embrace all of this falderal is to tap into and to be a part of a very grand thing. To reject it means that you are standing on stage pretending to an audience and exposed as a fraud.

One does shows because the love the history and traditions. One knows to say “merde” to a dancer for good luck, it makes us part of a much larger group than the brave twenty putting on a show in the local gym.

We love to trade stories. The story of poor Emma Livry, the ballerina who burned up on stage because she refused flame retardant on her tutu. The story of the great choreographer George Balanchine calling up Jean Rosenthal … to apologize! The story of Martha Graham refusing Adolph Hitler’s invitation to choreograph the Berlin Olympics. The story of Loie Fuller, the dancer who changed the Folies Bergère to become a place where the elite would attend in their top hats and tails even though it was low-brow burlesque. The story of Tallalah Bankhead, the great actress from Hitchcock’s Lifeboat doing cartwheels at parties … with no panties on! Each story adds to the flavor and richness of Theater.

To reject a superstition is the same as rejecting a mechanic in a raid. It shows lack of respect for the game and lack of respect for yourself. When you don’t respect yourself, you will get used by others for the rest of your life and end up alone and bitter. Don’t do that.

“It’s just pixels, lol”

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Song of the Witches
By William Shakespeare

(from Macbeth)

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.