Part One: The Audition

Call-backs and fight training for KU student thespians

rabs, grapples and throws. Punches, flat kicks and face snaps. Plus, the memorization of about 700 brooding and ominous lines composed by literature's greatest playwright, William Shakespeare.

Those are only a few tasks to be mastered by Alex Salamat, the University of Kansas student who seized the title role of Macbeth in the Department of Theatre's production of the tragedy, set for an Oct. 8-13 run at the Crafton-Preyer Theatre in Murphy Hall.

The furious violence of "Macbeth" shouldn't pose trouble for Salamat. The senior from Prairie Village is a competitive boxer, wrestler and cage fighter. Salamat practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai kickboxing and Krav Maga, "the most brutal street self-defense system created by Israeli Special Forces that's designed to inflict the most damage to a person in as little time as possible," he explains.

Salamat grasps that Tazewell Thompson, the renowned professional director whom KU recruited to guide the play, wants a thug Macbeth.

"For his vision of Macbeth, Taz is playing up the warrior mentality," says Salamat. "In me, he saw the rawness of a soldier rather than nobleness. We're emphasizing his brutishness, since Macbeth's brutality is his downfall. Going into auditions, I never thought I'd play Macbeth since I really don't have the background. I'm half Iranian and half Irish."

But director Thompson's basic tactic is to explode typecast. Himself an African-American who grew up in Harlem, the award-winning theater veteran has made a life's work of diversifying drama. For instance, he's directed an all-black production of Tennessee Williams' "Glass Menagerie" and other productions meant to pack seats with African-Americans and other minorities - like Carlyle Brown's "The African Company Presents Richard III," August Wilson's "Fences," and the Pulitzer Prize Finalist "Black Star Line," about Marcus Garvey.

For his vision of "Macbeth," Thompson is adamant that audiences quickly will forget preconceptions of how the cast should appear in a play set in medieval Scotland.

"It's about finding the best actor for a role," says Thompson. "It has less and less to do with if an actor is Latino, Asian, black or white. With a classic like 'Macbeth,' nobody will be speaking with a brogue anyway."

At the moment, the New York City-based director is most concerned with whipping the student cast into shape in time for opening night, as many of the KU actors have no previous experience with Shakespeare. For Thompson, this mission is personal: Shakespeare is his favorite playwright and "Macbeth" his most-adored play.

Also, Thompson will strive to build the cast into polished actors ready to enter the highly competitive professional world of theater.

"I love to direct at the university level because someone was generous to me when I was starting out," says Thompson, who previously has headed productions at New York University, Juilliard, University of Kentucky, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Syracuse University and University of Indiana. "The actors will be central, along with the language of Shakespeare. I want to keep it intimate and spare, with the visual spotlight on costumes and lighting. And it's extremely physical. Not just the combat - but in how Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and others interact."

Besides demanding forceful physicality from the actors, the director is making it their charge to set a tone of worrying gloom for the audience.

"The witches in the play are being treated as part of this society - as normal as visiting a gypsy in the back of a storefront and getting your Tarot cards read - rather than people who control characters through magic," says Thompson.

Thus, an intense weight in fulfilling Thompson's creative idea for "Macbeth" falls upon the witches of the KU production, who must forge the play's ambience of doom while dodging the pitfalls of portraying Shakespeare's well-known hags.

Lizzie Hartman, a senior from Shawnee, won the role of the Third Witch. She says that the actresses who make up the Bard's coven hope to overcome the audience's advance idea of the world-famous witches.

"We want to avoid Disney, ABC Family stuff," says Hartman. "With the 'double, double toil and trouble' scene, it's past iconic to the point of being cheesy. People will know it, but maybe we could present it in a different way, one they don't expect. I imagine we could make the witches darker and more sinister to keep away from children's material."

Hartman is typical of the kind of ambitious and eager-to-learn student that will make or break the KU performance of "Macbeth." While she has two and a half years of theater under her belt and will head to Los Angeles next year to begin a career as a professional actress, this is Hartman's first Shakespeare play. But she expects director Thompson to demand a level of professionalism that will lift her stagecraft to a new peak before she graduates.

"It's such an honor to be recognized by someone of Taz's stature," Hartman says. "Especially because he loves Shakespeare so much and he is doing me the favor of wanting to work with me. I know I'm going to learn so much from him that I can take hopefully into my future acting career - and I'm going to milk it for all it's worth."

Indeed, KU's production of "Macbeth" is brimful with go-getting student actors who aim to conquer casting calls, amaze talent agents and join with professional theater companies - some within a matter of months.

One such hopeful is Amy Virginia Buchanan, a senior from Stillwater, Okla., slated to graduate in spring 2010. She won the coveted role of Lady Macbeth from Thompson by auditioning against type with a manly call-to-war from the king in Shakespeare's "Henry V."

"Lady Macbeth isn't just manipulative, but aggressive," Buchanan asserts. "She calls Macbeth to war. She abandons her humanity and becomes beastlike. I wanted to show Taz that I could do this."

Buchanan says that every KU actress invited by Thompson for a callback aspired to play Lady Macbeth. But she thinks that she stood out to the director because of the personal determination that she admittedly shares with the devious architect of King Duncan's murder.

"I feel a lot of horrible similarities with Lady Macbeth," says Buchanan. "I plan and I'm strategic. But I just hope my intentions aren't as selfish. While I want to be a success, I want those around me to be successful as well."

Armed with the turn as Lady Macbeth in her theatrical résumé, Buchanan will go to Chicago after graduation "to produce good theater." Additionally, she hopes to perform stand-up comedy and obtain a master's in theater while she's in the Windy City. But like the woman she will portray in this Shakespeare tragedy, Buchanan is undaunted by her tough career path.

"I'm not as scared as I should be," she says. "I think later on that fear will show. But, right now, I'm not scared."

With Salamat, Hartman, Buchanan and others, Thompson has gambled for success with
actors he hopes can embody each role in his beloved "Macbeth."

"The repercussions of who is cast and who is ready to pick up a script are critical," says Thompson. "I will be satisfied if they can create flesh-and-blood characters by the time I leave."

Now, in the rigors of this coming month's fight workshops, read-throughs and rehearsals, the director will ready his student ensemble for opening night.

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