Salim Ghouse, who is directing Shakespeare's classic tragedy Macbeth for his company Phoenix Players, and also plays the title role, walks in with his wife Anita, who plays Lady Macbeth, a few minutes later. Both are dressed in black.

"We have stuck to black and white for our costumes and lighting schemes because these are two colours that don't draw attention. Besides the central theme of the play -- `Fair is foul and foul is fair' -- is best expressed through these contrasting colours," says Ghouse. So while the three witches are dressed in white, the rest of the cast wears black.

Ghouse calls out to the rest of the cast, instructing them to goover their warm-up routine once again. The reason: he is trying to adapt the legendary play in a martial art form. "At the martial art level, the entire play is about breathing in and breathing out. This technique lends itself very well to Macbeth. After all Macbeth is a warrior -- the greatest living warrior and the entire sphere of the play is an essentially elemental world," he says.

Ghouse tries to use body movements and sticks to creating martial movements. "None of my actors are trained in any martial art. But I have taught them the basic form for acting purposes. I want all of them to be good fakes," says Ghouse, himself a sixth degree black-belt.And none of the actors, apart from Ghouse and Anita, are familiar with Shakespeare either. "Macbeth is like a modern day yuppie who wants more and more out of life. He is the insider who becomes an outsider -- by breaking the moral code and betraying his own system," says Ghouse on the logic he applied while explaining the essence ofthe play to his cast.For wife Anita, playing Lady Macbeth will complete a hat-trick of sorts -- she had earlier played Portia in The Merchant Of Venice and Ophelia in Hamlet -- all her husband's productions. "Macbeth is the most frightening play on earth because it is very difficult to look at a side of life that's so violent. It isn't easy to kill someone who has come to your house," says Anita. It is equally difficult for a husband-wife team to be the director and producer of a play and act in it as well. "This level of interaction has truly made us integral parts of each other. One role be it husband, wife, actor or director flows into the other. But it is also extremely demanding," she says.Anita views the play as a journey into the dark. "It is very difficult to take that journey. We go into areas people wouldn't tread on and in doing so we find love, tenderness and, finally, light," she says.