There is a film premiere doing the rounds this week whose title nods to the oldest rule in theatre: you do not, under any circumstances, wish a performer good luck. Say it in a dressing room and you will get a stricken look, possibly a small ceremony of undoing — turn around three times, step outside, knock, wait to be invited back in. To an outsider it is charming nonsense. To anyone who has stood in the wings with their heart in their throat, it is scaffolding.
The oldest rules backstage
"Break a leg" is the accepted substitute in English-speaking theatre, and its origins are argued over endlessly — a bow deep enough to bend the knee, a reference to the line of the leg curtains, a general habit of inverting a wish so as not to tempt fate. Dancers say "chookas" in some countries; opera and much of European theatre borrows the Italian phrase about the wolf's mouth. Then there is the play by Shakespeare set in Scotland, whose name is not spoken indoors, referred to instead as the Scottish play, with a whole cleansing ritual reserved for anyone who slips.
Every trade has its version. Sailors and their reluctance to rename a boat. Cyclists and their number pinning order. Writers who cannot start a new chapter on a Friday. What links them is not credulity but stakes: rituals cluster wherever the outcome matters enormously and control is only partial.
What a ritual is actually doing
Look closely at any superstition and you find a mechanism underneath the folklore. It marks a threshold — this is where ordinary life stops and the performance begins. It gives restless hands something to do in the minutes when there is nothing left to prepare. It creates continuity, so tonight's terrifying opening feels connected to every other time you managed it. And crucially, it gives you a place to put the fear: not into the work, but into the shoes you always lace left first.
You can borrow this shamelessly, and most competent people already do. The colleague who always walks around the block before a presentation. The woman who wears the same earrings to every difficult meeting. The friend who plays one specific song in the car before a job interview. None of them believe the earrings are magic. They believe, correctly, that having a fixed sequence lowers the number of decisions you must make while frightened.
Building your own, deliberately
If you have a big thing coming — an interview, a scan result, a first date after a long absence, a speech at your own mother's birthday — build the ritual on purpose rather than waiting for one to accrete. Keep it to three steps, short enough to fit into a corridor. Something for the body: a slow exhale, shoulders down, feet planted. Something you can hold: a ring turned, a stone in a pocket, a folded card with one sentence on it. And something you say, silently or aloud, that is not a promise of success but a reminder of intent — "I know this", or "be useful", or simply your grandmother's name.
Portability is what makes it work. A ritual that requires your own kitchen is no help in an airport, and one that depends on a lucky object you might lose creates a new anxiety of its own. The point is a reliable doorway, not a talisman you can be separated from.
What should I say instead of "good luck"?
To a performer, "break a leg" remains the safe choice, and among dancers or musicians you can borrow their own phrase if you know it. Outside the theatre, the warmest thing is usually specific rather than generic: "you have prepared for this", "I'll be thinking of you at three", "tell me everything afterwards". It shifts the focus from chance to competence and to the fact that someone is waiting to hear how it went.
Is it silly to have a lucky object?
Not at all — a lucky necklace or a particular pen is a perfectly reasonable way to signal to yourself that this occasion counts. The line worth watching is flexibility: if losing the object would derail you, or if the ritual keeps growing extra steps and can no longer be skipped without dread, it has stopped steadying you and started running you. If that begins to feel compulsive rather than comforting, it is worth mentioning to someone qualified, because there are gentle, practical ways through it.
What I love about the backstage rules is their honesty. Nobody pretends that turning around three times controls the evening. What the ritual admits is far more interesting: that we are about to do something we cannot guarantee, in front of people, and that we would like to walk into it with our hands steady. Most of us are doing a version of that on a Tuesday morning, in ordinary clothes, with no curtain at all.
