Here at Shakespeare For Our Children, Halloween is one of our favorite times of year: a season of celebrating Shakespeare’s ghost stories, and reflections on the darker side of experience, amongst various “tales of sound and fury.”
And let us not forget how Halloween allows for us all to become performers for an evening, stepping into a costume and acting out the art of trick-or-treating!
For all of the magic of Halloween, we should remember how theatres themselves can bring together performances and spooky thrills every day of the year. Ghost hunters and aficionados have long identified theatres as some of the most haunted of all spaces. Just think of the countless actors, crews, and audience members who have occupied a given theatre across the years, with all of the emotional intensity and backstage dramas that accompany a production. Theatres are, in effect, supernatural playgrounds — as suggested by a series of stories ranging from Broadway spectres to Scottish phantoms. And we cannot forget London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane (pictured above), widely believed to be the world’s most haunted theatre.
Not everyone believes in ghosts, of course; for some, plays present just enough of a world of make-believe! But at this time of year, it is always worth remembering Hamlet’s words to his skeptical friend: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Act 1, scene 5).
©2021