Honey, I Shrunk the Performers!

Dov Weinstein of Tiny Ninja Theater knows that good things do, indeed, come in small packages.

By Topher Kandik

He's 28 years old and wears a white oxford, white trousers, white sneakers and a pair of white gloves. He plays with toys. Groups of onlookers gather to gawk at the way he carries on in different voices. Dov Weinstein is just back from Europe where his Tiny Ninja Theater recently produced Tiny Ninja Theater Presents MacBeth. Now, he's basking in the success of four sold-out shows of Tiny Ninja Theater Presents Romeo and Juliet at the Warehouse Theater. Tiny Ninja Theater recently completed a quick, fresh, and captivating production of Shakespeare's tirelessly and generally tiresomely recounted tale of star-crossed

"Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!" Mercutio (Trevor Bigfoot) vs. Tybalt (Brice Leigh)

But even Baz Luhrman can cast attractive players. It takes a little something else to make them play.

And play they did.

Sure we were watching a grown man play with toys, but Weinstein's trained and nuanced voice, impressively focused storytelling, and all-around passion and reverence for the Bard brought the characters and production alive. By the end of the short show (a tight 45-minute production complete with all the famously classic scenes and lines) Weinstein actually transformed himself into a character (well, actually, two: Romeo and Juliet); set aside the initial actors (who were, after all, plastic figures); and gracefully, tragically met his fate on stage.

The audience became believers.

Citing a dearth of plastic ninjas acting Shakespeare (I guess NYC doesn't have everything, Frank Rich!), Weinstein became the creative force behind Tiny Ninja Theater. His performances of the Scottish play at the Fringe Festival in NYC in 2000 were all the rage. As an encore, he took on the sonnets on Valentine's Day (2002) and even ventured away from Shakespeare with a send-up of the elections of 2000 and A Brief History of DUMBO, his eclectic and now defunct creative breeding ground in NYC, and The Effects of Nuclear War.

Weinstein swears he has no criminally obsessive affinity for the little plastic warriors. He did play with toys when he was a kid, as I suspect most of us did. He doesn't espouse Eastern principles under the guise of New Age philosophy. He didn't, as far as he lets on, make toy ninjas, 5,000 at a time, á la Diego Rivera with toy soldiers when he was young. He just believes in their ability to play Shakespeare. Which leads to the next sane question…

Why Shakespeare?

Again, Weinstein doesn't offer pretensions. He likes Shakespeare, but not more than other classical playwrights. He knows the Bard is a special writer. And he knows the stories have the depth and complexity to bring out the best in his actors. He is aware of—but not neurotically preoccupied with—puppet shows (he studied puppetry in New York as well as with The Green Fools in Alberta, Canada), toy theater, Shakespeare for kids, etc. His primary focus is the words and the stories of the Bard. He enjoys working with but is not unnaturally wedded to the works he has chosen. He even shyly admits that he takes requests.

Okay, ninjas and Shakespeare. An unlikely combination, to say the least. But in Washington, of all places? Yes, because he was. Weinstein reports that his run in Washington, despite being frenetic, was enjoyable. His shows were sold out and he extended his run (by a day). The hardest part about producing his shows, he says, is finding the space. He can only play to about 25 people a night due to the size of his stage, and, even though plastic opera glasses are passed to each audience member on the way, he finds that locating an appropriately sized, available space presents a challenge. He hopes to come back. I hope he is asked.

We'd be crazy not to.

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Topher Kandik has seen 32 of Shakespeare's 37 plays performed, including all of the histories and tragedies. He has read only one. He is currently working on a documentary about apes called, "Whose Hat is That?"