Yearbook Groups Copy

Laura Shaheen
McKinney Boyd HS (McKinney, Texas)

Midsummer Nightmare

The stage for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was illuminated brightly; the three couples on stage each spoke their lines with a practiced ease. House manager and junior Laura Norman watched from her vantage point next to the risers, silently mouthing the lines alongside the actors. Her gaze was focused on the two benches closest to her; she did not notice the third. The black bench sat innocuously, neither the actors not the audience knew it was missing a screw. A crack resounded through the black box theatre; the bench had snapped.

“Our play wasn’t haunted, but that one performance was definitely cursed,” Norman said. “Lucy Breor, our sound board operator, started the whole thing by mentioning “Macbeth.” Later on, the stage manager repeated it and it stuck.”

The “cursed” show was the Saturday matinee; it had already been performed twice in front of live audiences and countless times in rehearsals. It was supposed to flow as smoothly as the others.

“The curse started off with one of the actors forgetting his lines,” Norman said. “Then, someone fainted. Things just got worse and worse.”

A costume caught on a loose nail in the set and ripped to shreds. The house lights came on in the middle of the performance and turned off just as suddenly.

“The whole ordeal was actually pretty funny,” Norman said. “I heard a girl say as she walked out that she was definitely trying out for the musical now.”

To exorcise the curse, stage manager and junior Emily Nielson and Breor went outside afterward, spun around three times and spat on the ground.

“It made the play more interesting,” Norman said. “Everyone said stuff about creating a tradition, but I just liked working on it. It was worth it because the play was something I could take pride in.”