Part Three: Opening Night

“It’s been everything that we’ve been building up to for the past seven weeks,” says Lizzie Hartman, who portrays the Third Witch. “But then also a result of the many, many years we’ve had as actors. It’s all been leading up to this moment and about living up to our full potential.”

In early October, the last missing piece of the production — the audience — arrives as “Macbeth” finally opens its run of six performances at Crafton-Preyer Theatre.

Even before the action of the play begins, crashing thunder and portentous war drums —— original music composed for the production by Fabian Obispo — stir up a sinister atmosphere for the crowd filling the seats. Meantime, smoke mingles with the stage lights to produce a blurred glow, part of the lighting design by Elizabeth Banks.

Director Tazewell Thompson works out final details with the cast.

As the audience settles in and the theater dims, attention is focused upon the gaunt set designed by Delbert Unruh. It’s made of thin slats that jut at opposing angles. Everything on stage seems smeared with scarlet paint to evoke atrocities about to unfold in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

“It’s a very violent atmosphere,” says director Thompson. “It’s a community used to settling conflicts through physical violence. The last man standing wins.”

In fact, the play’s opening scene is a ferocious battle punctuated by men screaming and the clatter of swords. The choreography of the fight, run at full speed, is very forceful. It’s easy to understand why the play has a reputation for injuring members of the cast. However, the KU actors make the combat totally believable without hurting themselves, a testament to the expertise of Jeremy Riggs, the fight director, and the skill of the players to “selling” a fight safely.

But the opening scene is merely a taste of calamities to come.

From left: Alex Salamat as Macbeth and Erik LaPointe as Macduff.

“There are a few unwritten rules in the theater,” Riggs says. “For instance, you’re not supposed to show the killing of women or children on stage. Shakespeare breaks those rules in this play.”

Indeed, with bloody combat scenes punctuating the action, the pace of the tragedy has been stepped up from the early rehearsals — careening from Macbeth’s murder of Duncan to his murder of Banquo to his murder of Macduff’s innocent family.

If the cast feels anxious, their nerves never show to the audience. They’ve self-assuredly morphed from 21st century college students to the Bard’s medieval kinds, thanes, ladies and warriors.

“There’s a little piece of me— a little shoulder devil — that until opening night told me that I wasn’t going to make it, that I was going to let everyone down,” says Amy Virginia Buchanan, who plays Lady Macbeth.

Lizzie Hartman, who plays a witch, practices a scene with Alex Salamat, who is Macbeth.

But under the guidance of a celebrated director, Buchanan thinks that she’s made great strides as a steady performer. She’s learned to interpret a complex and notorious character — one fraught with madness — in what will be the capstone of her KU acting career.

“It taught me about reliability in a production,” says Buchanan. “Being one of the driving characters, I had a responsibility to the production and the audience. What I’ve learned in this production is to separate myself from the character that I’m playing — and to leave the demons that haunt that character in the theater and not bring them home. Having the opportunity to play Lady Macbeth now, I’ve learned how to depict characters with psychological issues.”

Indeed, many in the cast of “Macbeth” wrap up their experience in the play with a similar sense of creative growth to encourage them as they start on careers in the theater.

Final fight breakdown

“Prior to this show, I didn’t know whether or not I would be able to be a leading man or the impetus for an entire show to take shape,” says Alex Salamat, who played the antihero Macbeth. “But now, it’s really built me up to think maybe I can do this. Before, I thought maybe I’d be a good man on the side for comic relief — something of that manner. But Taz gave me this opportunity and I’m grateful. It’s increased my confidence immensely and really opened my eyes to what could be in the future.”

Salamat says the nuts-and-bolts acting skills honed through acting in Shakespeare’s play under professional direction are the
taproot of new self-assurance.

“I’ve learned a lot about the technical aspects of being an actor — vocal support, breathing, diction,” the KU senior says. “Especially with Shakespeare, when people can’t understand some of the language, you really have to support your words, get them out there, and let people know what you’re speaking about. You have to invite them to be a part of the story.”

Christopher McGillivray as King Duncan.

Other cast members echo Salamat’s belief that the run of “Macbeth” and tutelage of Tazewell Thompson have readied them for the professional theater.

“I have the confidence and strength to go out and perform more Shakespeare and perform harder roles,” Hartman says. “It’s going to take strength to pursue a professional acting career. And I think ‘Macbeth’ has just amped me up that much more. It’s made me claw at the door of graduation — to take what I’ve learned here and go out and attempt the crazy world of acting.”

The play concludes its run in a matter of days, and director Thompson prepares to return to his home in New York City. He reflects on his satisfaction in using the work of the Bard to mold a new group of young dramatists.

“I’ve introduced them to the world of Shakespeare, to a great and important play in Shakespeare’s cannon,” the director says. “I think they understand and appreciate — and hopefully some have come to love — the language of Shakespeare. They now understand how the world of Shakespeare is really all about the language — it introduces you to character and place and emotion, and the wants and needs of a character. I feel that what I wanted to get out of the students has happened.”

Indeed, as a guest director, Thompson could have chosen any play he wished to lead at KU, but he says he understood that students had the most to gain from performing “Macbeth.”

As the curtain falls on the final performance, the director says that immersion into the artistic genius of Shakespeare — more than the experience of working with a famed director, or playing before a large live audience, or gaining skill at working with professional-level props, lighting and sound effects — is what will nourish the talent of the KU actors.

“To me the greatest training in the world for any actor is to work on Shakespeare,” the director says. “If you can conquer Shakespeare or accomplish a couple of scenes of Shakespeare, it’s going to benefit you no matter what other roles you play. The language stimulates and provokes the actors’ imaginations. You have to take these words that are just lying on the page — there are no stage directions, there’s nothing to give you a clue or to help you. It’s like solving a puzzle. When you understand that you hold the key to what Shakespeare was striving for, that your imagination can unlock Shakespeare, that is something that the student actor will carry with them for the rest of their lives.”

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Text & Audio Interview: Brendan Lynch; Video: Heather Attig, Frank Barthell, Mark Crabtree, Jim Jewell;
Photo: David McKinney; Web: John Stringer, Justin Henning;
Student Production Assistants: Tyler Bachert, Erin Darley, Lucas Singleton