Macshush!

Every theater actor, it seems, has at least a couple of superstitions: Never wear yellow (or green; it varies) to a rehearsal, no peacock feathers allowed in the theater, never give an actor an apple before a show, no whistling in any part of the building. Among the acts considered good luck: pinching, throwing coal into an empty gallery, saying the French word for poop, and -- the best for last -- spitting in someone's face.

"Oh, yeah," says Lynn Cohen, nodding. "That's a big one. The first time someone spat in my face, I was surprised. But I knew it was done with love. And there's not a lot of saliva involved. It's just, you know." Then she air-kissed an invisible someone, European-style, except she added a spitting noise on both sides.

"I was rehearsing with a French company once and I showed up in something green and everyone said, 'You have to take that off,' " MacIntosh recalls. "I told them I didn't have anything else to wear and they said, 'Well, you can't wear that.' "

Why is the theater so superstitious? The question was posed to Kaufman, who at the time was sitting on a stool in the main rehearsal room. He was smiling in a way that suggested he'd like to be anywhere other than right here, in this room, discussing superstition.

"Why. Hmmm," he said. Then he looked to a member of the crew, a woman typing on a laptop. "Do you have any idea?" he asked.

"Control," she said, barely pausing to look up. "It's because theater people are not in control."

It's a pretty good working assumption: The less in control one feels, the more likely one is to believe that being spit on, for instance, confers protection from the fates, and perhaps good luck, too. Baseball is superstition-laden, and it is no coincidence that it is known as "the game of inches." If you are lucky, those inches will make the difference between winning and losing -- between catching a ball and dropping it, between a home run and a warning-track catch.

Theater is similar.

"Every time you go out there, there is nothing standing between you and fate," MacIntosh says. "You could fall flat on your face, or you could soar with the gods."

"Or forget your lines," says Valdes-Aran.

"Literally, an actor could die right in front of you onstage," says Cohen.

So does anyone worry that all this "Macbeth" talk could bring on the worst when the play opens in Central Park? (There has already been a very minor snafu: Previews were supposed to start tonight but were delayed a day because of rain.) Pose this question to Kaufman and it's suddenly clear that he's been giving succinct answers not because he is bored, as it initially appears, or distracted. It's because he is scared.