TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS--Theater Ninja offers a thought-provoking scare-treat

Theater Ninjas, which bills itself as “the Food Truck of Cleveland Theater” due to its having no permanent home, but relishes its nomadic pattern of trying out “new and exciting spaces to perform,” is noted for rethinking what theater can be.  According to its Artistic Director, Jeremy Paul, the theater is “committed to making our region and our home a better place to live.”  The theater’s newest attempt to achieve its goal is a production of Cleveland native Caroline V. McGraw’s TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS.

Paul and McGraw are long time friends.  They have known each other since high school.  When Paul acknowledges, “She was an incredible writer . . . and as we’ve both begun working in theater, I’ve occasionally asked her if she’s written any plays that would be good for Theater Ninjas.  With its dark humor, monsters and rhythmic, brutal language, TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS is the perfect play for us.”  He goes on to state, “I’m honored to be able to produce the first professional production of Caroline’s work in her hometown.”

Yes, the script is a perfect fit for the Ninjas.  Paul and his artistic staff tend to pick plays or create stagings which stretch the limits and challenge the audience.  This is a thinking person’s theater in every sense of the word.  McGraw is their kind of writer.   TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS is the odd-quasi-surrealistic play that should excite their niche audience.

Though the two-act script sometimes gets lost in its lack of a clear focus, and misses out on a clear dénouement, it does have its effect.

Brandy is a highly in-demand clown-artist who plys her craft on the children’s birthday party beat.  She’s a clown that not only entertains the kids, but their cheating fathers and teenage brothers with her sex acts.  She is a complicated woman who has demons in her life, including the monster who sleeps under her bed and rips and claws at her each night.  Is the “monster” real or a figment of Brandy’s guilt-ridden imagination?  Are the scars on her body the result of the “monster” or self-mutilation? 

Besides her own issues, Brandy has to deal with Reverb, a would-be clown collaborator.  Is he a stalker or a potential business partner?  Then there is Jack, a high school swimmer who shares Brandy’s bed on a regular basis.  Did she seduce him or is he a willing participant?  His girlfriend confronts Brandy.  Is she too, going to become a victim of the clown’s games?  Adding to the complications are the questions of what to do with the father she met at one of her clowning gigs who follows her to a gambling resort?  And what is to become of her constant liaisons with the mother from another of her birthday appearances?

Paul states, “A clown has to live in the same world you do, and this is why it can be so powerful:  clowns are honest. No lies.  No hiding.  Just simple human connection.” 

Paul requests, ”Please:  don’t be scared.”  Sorry Mr. director.  Brandy, with or without her make-up, costume and red rubber nose, is plenty scary!  And there are many Brandys out there, troubled people who ply on the weaknesses and desires of others, with or without their permission:  Priests and teachers who practice pedophilia;  a restaurant spokesperson who trades in child porn;  sexual predators on college campuses who don’t understand the need for “consent;”  drive-by shooters who don’t respect the lives of others.  “Brandy” and her duplicates do their part to make this a scary world.

The Ninja production is creatively staged and well-acted.  The intimate 50-seat theater space makes for an up-close-and-personal experience.

Though her clown act could be more creative and involving, Rachel Lee Kolis effectively develops the role of Brandy.   Bryon Tobin nicely textures the role of Jack, the high school student who has fallen under Brandy’s spell.  Valerie C. Kilmer is believable as Tash, Jack’s girlfriend.  Val Kozlenko is properly menacing as The Un, the under-the-bed “monster.”  Lauren Joy Fraley nicely fleshes out the pathetic Nina, a hanger-on from a Brandy gig.  Ryan Lucas does what he can with the vaguely written part of Reverb.

Eric M. C. Gonzalez’s original music helps underscore the plot development, and Susan Rothmann’s creation of the creature and puppets helps create the appropriate illusions.  Ben Gantose adds the right eeriness with his lighting.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT:  Though not for everyone, TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS will be a positive experience for those who like “thinking” person’s theater.  It also makes for a positive Halloween season scare-treat.  What’s hiding under your bed?

TALL SKINNY CRUEL CRUEL BOYS runs through November 14, 2015 at Near West Lofts, 6706 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland.  For tickets go to http://theaterninjas.com

Please vote for Issue 8--which supports Cuyahoga County's Arts & Culture sector and is NOT A TAX INCREASE.

Eric Coble, a Cleveland Heights-based writer, is the author of the Alexandra Trilogy.  Each play showcases Alex/Alexa/Alexandra at different ages and stages of her life.

The series starts with “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee,” which was staged by Actors’ Summit in their 2012 season.  The plot finds twenty-two year old Alex, a college grad, working as a barista. Alex’s plan is to have no plan at all.  But into her life accidentally flows handsome, artistic and some-time repairman, Christopher, who seems, in his subtle, and often bumbling way, to have other ideas for Alex’s existence.

“Stranded on Earth,” which finds Alexa, in her 40s, is the second script in the series, but was written last.  It is presently getting its regional premiere in a co-production of Mamai Theatre Company and Theater Ninjas.

“The Velocity of Autumn,” which recently had a Broadway run, garnered Estelle Parsons a Best Acting Tony nomination.  The play had a run at Beck Center last season, feaqturing a superb Dorothy Silver performance.   Velocity was the third play in Coble’s Alexandra trilogy.

Velocity found 78-year old Alexandra barricaded in her NY brownstone,  resisting being put “away” by her children.   She does have slips of memory, her knees and back hurt, she can no longer hold a paint brush, but she is sharp enough to know that she doesn’t want to leave her home and go to an extended care facility.  She thoroughly believes, ‘There are good and bad ways to die.” 

The one-hour, “Stranded on Earth,” an existentialistic exercise, finds Alexa in a state of emotional distress, “asking why do I exist?”  She’s a creative artist who finds herself in the midst of midlife chaos.  Everything has changed.  She isn’t sure where her life went off track and how, or if, can she get restarted.

As she probes and rants, she creates a Jackson Pollack-like abstract painting, tossing and splattering paint from above, then wallowing in it and then traipsing around, blurring the colors to create a final image that is much like her chaotic thoughts.

Coble’s poetic writing in “Stranded on Earth, in contrast to his sequential and traditional verbiage of “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee” and “The Velocity of Autumn” is a little off-setting.  Alexa’s grasping to make things come together in some logical form not only alludes Alexa, but, at times, the viewer.

Coble, who lived on Indian reservations as a youth, uses allusions to the artistic and religious pattern of creating “unfixed sand paintings,” ritual artistic arrangements which are destroyed or blow away after a ceremony is finished.  

Derdriu Ring is compelling as Alexa.  Hers is an impressive performance.  She flows in a torrent of torment, unable to find the right colors, blends, words, images, and clarity to explain to herself, or convey to the viewer, a clear line that makes us believe that she, and us, will be able to find our way.

Director Jeremy Paul, the artistic director of Ninja, has helped Ring develop a mesmerizing performance.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: Mamaí’s mission is “to create intelligent, relevant classical theatre that offers an artistic home for Cleveland’s theatre artists, and equal opportunity for women in the professional theatre community.”  Theater Ninja’s goal is to “reimagine how and why we tell stories, and help us to create deep, fascinating worlds for the audience to explore.”  Their production of Eric Coble’s “Stranded on Earth,” with a master class demonstration of finite acting by Derdriu Ring, well meets both organization’s purposes.  

Mamaí and Theater Ninja’s STRANDED ON EARTH runs through June 22 at the Pilgrim Church, 2592 West 14th Street, Cleveland, For tickets go to:  http://www.mamaitheatreco.org

BLACK CAT LOST, a thought provoking experience at Theatre Ninja

Theater Ninja is a nomadic theatre company which has no permanent home and appears in store fronts, art spaces, and churches.  It was founded in 2006 with the goal of developing innovative, nontraditional theatrical experiences.   As founder Jeremy Paul explains, “We are a risk-taking company.”

Erin Courtney, the author of BLACK CAT LOST, Theatre Ninjas most recent offering, fits perfectly into the mold of Ninja’s targeted scripts/devised theatre.  The play, which centers on the impermanence of life and the pain of loss, uses esoteric language and Zen poetry, to examine conflicting memories of events jointly experienced, and the viewing of death and the unseen. 

Using the controversial concepts of Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross’s stages of grief and dying: denial (often accompanied by isolation), anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, the multi-scene play accentuates the idea of seeing each event twice.  First it is experienced, and then it is relived as a memory. The questions arise, “Are our memories accurate?”   “Can any two people have the same memory experience?”  “Can individuals experience and then move on?”  These issues can become intense as people attempt to re-experience someone who has died.

Though somewhat obtuse, the script does invoke thoughts of an individual’s own mortality and how we remember those who have passed through our lives and are no longer with us.

Director Jeremy Paul uses his actors and the intimate Waterloo Arts space well.

Ray Caspio, Lauren Joy Fraley, and Sarah Moore are all convincing in their portrayals.

BLACK CAT LOST is preceded by the REFRAIN, a short devised presentation conceived and directed by Paul, which features Tania Benites, Caspio and Moore.  The piece was first performed as part of AT-TEN-TION SPAN 2012, Cleveland Public Theatre’s , 10-minute play series.  It is described by its conceiver as, “a highly rhythmical sequence of movement and voices — a pseudo opening band” for Black Cat Lost.” 

It is composed as a non-linear connected series of lines, with no clear story.  It is performed by Benites, Caspio and Sarah Moore.

The final segment of the evening was TANGLE, TANGLE, a developing concept play performed by its writer Caspio, with accompaniment by composer Sean Ellis.  It is billed as “a queer performance of songs and stories, a microcosm challenging hate.” The segment presented, much in the vein of, ‘I Am What I Am,” from the musical LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, examines masculinity and femininity.  It includes concepts explained by American Psychologist Sandra Bem in her Gender Schema Theory.

Capsule judgement:  THE BLACK CAT LOST, THE REFRAIN and TANGLE, TANGLE, are the type of theatrical experiences that the cult followers of Theater Ninjas’ expect.  It is an evening of offerings that are probably too abstract for the traditional theater-goer, but will be of interest to the philosophical and contemporary thinker.

BLACK CAT LOST will be staged at Summit Artspace in Akron on November 7th, 8th and 9th.  For information go to http://theaterninjas.com

 
NICK & JEREMY, more devised theatre at Cleveland Public Theatre

What happens when two friends, Nick Riley, a drummer and performer, and Jeremy Paul, a director and actor, meet over a number of months to talk “stuff?”  Of course, they create a devised theatre piece, combining interactions, vinyl, drumming and audience interplay, and name the proceedings NICK & JEREMY.  Then, they make arrangements to have it staged at Cleveland Public Theatre, the home of theatrical invention and innovation.

This is not your traditional theatrical production.  This world premiere staging is in the Storefront Studio theatre, a black box space, with a thrust stage, that used to house a bookstore. 

When you enter, you are greeted by the actors who engage you in conversations based on questions they ask you and you ask them. 

Finally, when they are in the right mood, the duo sits down at a small table, have some coffee, and proceed to talk, occasionally getting up and putting various records on an old fashioned turntable, play the drums, go to a podium, do some shtick, and return to the table for some more talk.

The subjects they discuss range from whether one should wear a hat in the theatre, to whether the red dot on the floor under the table is supposed to be Mars, to foundational psychology, the operation of the brain, the sense of self, enlightenism, the consciousness of reality, drugs, dreams, magic, demons, the disappearance of the universe with only this room and the people in it remaining, whether the “I” is really the “Me,” writing a letter to oneself as a youth at age 80, suspended disbelief, situational intentionalism, commitment, and whether, in fact, everything that the audience is hearing is really only taking place in their individual heads.  The vignettes finally come to a halt when the audience is taken on a personal guided imagery.  Well, at least that is where it should have ended.  The tacked on after-the fact ending added little.

Sound obtuse, too intellectual?  That depends on the listener.  If you hang around coffee shops and play mind games, or you participated in all nighters in college based on what was discussed, or should have been discussed, in philosophy class, or you are addicted to probing for the beyond, you’ll feel right at home.  You’ll really want to walk onto the stage, which is no more than five feet away from anyone in the theatre, and take part. 

In fact, lots of people swarmed around the actors after the performance to continue the dialogue.  Others walked out, got in their cars, and pondered the meaning of life as they drove home with their heads full of random thoughts, asking, “What in Hades did I just see and hear?”

Capsule judgement: NICK AND JEREMY is an electric kool-aid acid trip, minus the drugs, which would make Timothy Leary, the proponent of the use of psychedelic substances and believer in” tune on, tune in, drop out,” very happy.  It should be of great interest to deep or pseudo-deep thinkers.

NICK & JEREMY runs from March 29-April 13, 2013 at Cleveland Public Theatre.  For tickets call 216-631-2727 or go on line to www.cptonline.org.

Monster Play

MONSTER PLAY, Jeremy Paul’s imagination again goes wild

When Jeremy Paul, the creator and director of MONSTER PLAY, now getting its world premiere at Cleveland Public Theatre, was a child, he was afraid of monsters. A normal kid would be afraid of bats, witches, thing under the bed, or the boogey man. As has been demonstrated in many of his previous productions, Paul’s fertile imagination doesn’t follow the “normal” path. Believe it or not, his monsters were robots. Yep, robots.

As I said in a previous Theatre Ninjas’ review, “being inside Paul’s head must be like being in a labyrinth of a fun house. Weird visions must swirl around and around. The result of Paul’s creativity is usually fascinating and confounding theatre.” MONSTER PLAY, his latest invention, is true Paul.

The evening starts out with the author, sounding like Bela Lugosi of Count Dracula film fame, warning the audience to turn off their cell phones and not dare to crinkle candy wrappers. Or else! You have been warned. The bizarre is about to begin.

Paul creates a combination of monsters, fantasies and haunting metaphors. Andrew Kaletta’s set, is a canopy of fabrics draped over the theatre-in-the-round playing area. Large blood covered tarps often enshroud the actors making them into a solo monster, and other times individual actors are wrapped in the cloth. Startling Benjamin Gantose lighting effects, including a strobe light, add to the visual illusions. Blood inked actors assault the senses.

Paul inserts comic routines that delight, including a walking version of the shower scene from the movie PSYCHO, a macabre segment from Little Red Riding Hood, and several Grimm’s fairy tales.

Paul doesn’t just stop at getting you ready for Halloween, he also takes on the real monsters: religion, doctors, and parents.

Yes, as the conceiver warns, “Monsters haven’t gone anywhere, they still wait outside our houses, our closets, beneath old bridges, and in the grills of cars as they run stop lights.”

The cast is well versed and trained. They consume the stage and the imagination. Ray Caspio, Stuart Hoffman (adorned in a hair shirt), Val Kozlenko, Jenni Messner and Lauren B. Smith morph from role to role with ease in their grubby blood and dirt stained rough-clothed costumes.

Since the audience is no more than 15 feet away from the performers, the cast’s grunts, moans and smells are up front and personal. It all adds to the bizarre effect.

A pre-tween girl watching the performance I saw, spent most of the evening clinging to her father, being devoured by Paul’s imagination. I’m sure she spent a sleepless night.

CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: MONSTER PLAY is a fun, confounding and psychologically disrupting experience. It should be on the must see list for every warped teenager, and will also appeal to adults who are fascinated by things that go bump in the night.