Theater Ninjas Ambush the Audience

It’s more than the cool name and their funky movie theater digs. Theater Ninjas just aren’t your typical theater company, insists founder Jeremy Paul and Associate Artistic Director Faye Hargate. “Hey - we’re on Coventry between a sports bar and a hookah bar. You can buy a pizza and bring it into our shows.”

The Ninjas are great conversationalists, I discovered when we hooked up at Phoenix on Coventry a week before their new show opened. They’re passionate and professional, original theater makers with blue-chip cred who know what they’re about -- yet don’t take themselves too seriously.

In their new piece Peripheral Visions, Hargate and Paul lay it all on the line. They’ve created it from the ground up – starting in improvisations and finishing 6 months later with a script featuring just the two of them, each playing 8-10 characters. “It’s about two people moving through different universes,” says Hargate. “ Part of it is fantastic and dream-like, other parts are grotesque satire -- a dark mundane Walmart-like place.”

“Quirky, fun, silly, too!” interjects Paul, and the two instantly fall into a deadpan riff on experimental theater.

Pretentious? I don’t think so. I mean, these are the folks who programmed 3 absurdist one-acts, then created a snarky cartoon with penguins to explain the History of Absurdist Theater instead of a curtain speech. (See it here on YouTube.)

The Ninjas are seriously into clowning and physically-based theatre. Hargate trained in Paris at the noted Ecole Jacques LeCoq. They’re also whipcrack smart about networking, locally and internationally. When the JCC brought Avner the Eccentric to town to perform at Playhouse Square, Hargate convinced him to provide a Ninja-sponsored workshop for local theater folk. “It was oversold,” says Hargate. “And it brought us a mix of people, from dancers to directors,” says Paul. “A lot of them ended up in Mad World.”

Though they work a lot with other companies – Paul with Dobama’s Night Kitchen, Hargate upcoming at CPT in The Other Shore, and both with Great Lakes -- they love having an artistic home to stretch their artistic muscles. “I wanted to have a storefront theatre like the ones I’ve seen in New York and Chicago,” says Paul. “I love the hands-on process,” says Hargate. “It’s really satisfying – from writing the words, to cutting the cardboard – doing it all.”

Check out Peripheral Visions April 11-27 at the Centrum Theater on Coventry, http://www.theaterninjas.com

From Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein lindaATcoolcleveland.com
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