©2020 Meg Bashwiner
In my old job, in my old life, in the before times, I would spend most of my nights at a theater until very late. After the glamorous part of the night, our two hours in the sun of the stage lights, I would take off my evening gown, my double layer of spanx and put back on my jeans and boots. I would knock the bouffant out of my hair and put it in a ponytail. I would pluck out my contact lenses and put back on my glasses. I would transform back into Clark Kent, but in my life, Clark Kent is the one with all of the super power. Clark Kent is the one who gets us paid.
After the theater had been through its full day of artists and audiences coming and going, after all the energy of the crowd had cleared and the hustle of the crew had coiled up the last mic cable and the last piece of popcorn swept into the trash, I would still be there— in the eerie emptiness of a very recently boisterous room waiting for final tallies and paperwork, the unglamorous business end of the night, collecting our check.
Finally when all the math had been done, final settlements were agreed on, checks were placed in locked cash boxes and hands were shaken—I would walk out onto the empty stage and the theater would be dark… for all but one light bulb on a 5 foot tall metal stand placed at the foot of the stage: the ghost light.
The ghost light is there for my safety, I wouldn’t know where the edge of that stage is without it and could tumble off of it. Even after performing on that stage all night, the edge of it has become a mystery to me in the dark, without the energy of a crowd bouncing back at me and making the border between stage and crowd palpable through the simple presence of humanity. I am unmoored without an audience and at risk of floating off the edge. Theaters are very dangerous places without an audience.
Most theaters use a ghost light so that the theater is never fully dark. Theaters are dangerous places in the the dark. They are often windowless with no available natural visible metric of night or day. The ghost light burns on, so that the next person on the shift who opens up the theater in the morning doesn’t have to fumble in the dark for the master light switch. It’s a little torch passed from the night crew to the day crew, an eternal flame of consideration. It’s also there in case someone who doesn’t know where the light switch is, stumbles into the theater for some reason, they could be a firefighter or a vagrant but regardless of their status, their safety is considered and their path illuminated by the solemn solitary ghost light.
It’s called a ghost light because there is a superstition that every theater has at least one ghost and we leave that light on for them. Often a load in to a theater is accompanied by a ghost story. The production manager will show me and my crew, to the stage, to the dressing rooms and to the front of house and they will proudly tell us about their theater’s ghost. In San Antonio there’s “Smokey” who likes it when people smoke the greenroom and is alleged to make an appearance if you light up. In Albuquerque there’s a young boy ghost who we were instructed to make a physical offering to before our performance for safety and good luck. I left him a Night Vale Scout Badge at an alter filled with ephemera deposited from artists past—pointe shoes, tubes of lipstick and programs all gathering dust in an alcove in the basement ensuring safety and protection from a tiny boy ghost. In New Castle a theater is said to be haunted a man killed in the basement by a rolling cannon ball that came loose from a track which was used to make a thunder sound effect. We are told about him when I ask to use the washer/dryer. I’ve been told of ghosts seated in balconies, lurking under stages and balancing on catwalks. Some died in the theaters themselves, after all theaters are very dangerous places. Some didn’t. Some died at home or in hospitals but worked at the theater or loved the theater so much that their souls are believed to rest or unrest within their hallowed walls.
I’ve never seen a ghost at a theater and I have spent hundreds of late nights in hundreds of theaters around the world all but alone in them. Sometimes I feel like i’m not alone or that off tense feeling of being afraid when you’re not sure why but no ghosts have ever materialized on my watch. They must wait for the living to leave so that they can play in the pool of the ghost light, reliving their glory and performing for an audience of ghosts.
It’s hard for me to imagine the theaters as empty with their ghost lights burning for no one right now. The sheer duration of it seams unfathomable. Years. Years where rooms that once burst with people are empty and deafeningly silent. Stages that welcomed acts from around the world are now caves of eerie shadows. Set pieces, rigging and stage craft that transformed those spaces into entirely new worlds over the course of a few hours are packed away. And we are left now with just vacuous and lonely dark rooms, illuminated by a single burning bulb.
Are the ghosts performing endlessly for an audience of ghosts without the normal break for the living to trade their place? Are Amy Winehouse and Elvis duetting ad nauseam? Are Little Richard and John Prine relentlessly jamming together in the strangest band that only could be imagined in some other haunted world? Are long forgotten vaudeville stars now nightly entertaining audiences of thousands who died this year by drowning in the their own lungs? Or am I there? Still in my evening gown repeating the same jokes caught in a parallel time loop. My voice being the last one to echo through the PA speakers for years to come. Or am I still waiting under the stage in my jeans and boots for our check? The haunted becomes the haunter.
Who plays upon those empty stages when we are gone for the night or when we are gone for an uncertain ever? Likely it’s just the rats. Rats across the globe scurrying into the light searching for the last bits of catering crumbs left behind. How prophetic a performance given how theaters and venues are being left behind in America. All that’s left is the unglamorous business end of the night, the empty theaters, the tallies and math, the rents and the utilities due with no way to pay them.
It’s time for you all to be Clark Kent and help get these theaters paid. Please go to saveourstages.com to find out more about how you can help save our independent venues around the country by contacting your representatives and letting them know it is our civic obligation to help independent theaters survive.
A theater without and audience is a very dangerous place. A Theater in the dark is a very dangerous place. We need to keep these ghost lights burning, so that the theater’s themselves do not become the ghosts, haunting our main streets, former bastions of joy and shared humanity, boarded up and mouldering forever. Consider our safety and keep the light on for us for when we open in the morning.