By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
You may have heard of Theater Ninjas‘ collaboration with Cleveland Museum of Art on the current exhibit, Last Days of Pompeii. We spoke with Jeremy Paul, Artistic Director of Theater Ninjas, on the phone.
Cool Cleveland: Who are Theater Ninjas?
Jeremy Paul: Theater Ninjas is a nomadic theater troupe that’s been around since 2006. We’ve done a few shows on the east side but for the last few years we’ve been mostly on the west side at ever changing locations. We’re very committed to doing site-specific work so we’re always looking for funky venues to put a play on.
How did you get involved in CMA’s current show, Last Days of Pompeii?
We do a lot of devised theater, new and original theater where we walk into a rehearsal room without a script but with an idea of what we want to create. Then, working with the actors and designers, together we create a show. That was what we did 2 years ago when we created what we’re now calling “Excavation 1.0,” a live-action museum built around themes connected to Pompeii. At the very last, sold-out performance of Excavation 1.0, which we performed at the 78th Street Studios, one of the curators at the Museum, Jon Seydl (exhibition co-organizer and The Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos, Jr. Curator of European Paintings and Sculpture [1500-1800] at the Cleveland Museum of Art) happened to see what we were doing. Coincidentally, he was working on a show, Last Days of Pompeii, which might as well have been a cousin to what we were doing in Excavation 1.0. He was looking at the same thing we were, the way Pompeii has existed in the popular imagination.
Coincidence? Really?
Absolute coincidence. Back then it was not public knowledge that he was working on Last Days of Pompeii. He called me up, we got coffee, and he said, “This is really bizarre; I’m working on the same thing you are but instead of using performance I’m using visual art.”
I wonder how much you influenced him. This exhibit strikes us as unusual for CMA in its extensive reference to popular culture.
I would never say that we influenced him, but there’s something about this topic that has inspired both of us in a similar way, looking for inspiration not just in the destruction of Pompeii, but in what happened after it was dug up in the 18th century and how Pompeii became a sort of communal day dream, a fantasy that people kept going back to. Pompeii becomes a way for people to tell their own stories through the lens of this ancient city.
Yes. History – especially Roman history – has a way of becoming a mirror for contemporary observers.
I happen to be very interested in Roman history but this show is not about history. Excavation is a jumping off point for talking about disaster – Pompeii was a terrible disaster but to listen to some people, Pompeii is always, only being destroyed. We also lampoon the “certainties” of scholars, certainties which are over turned every 10 years or so. Excavation is a very funny show if I do say so. We had to buffer the tragic solemnity with humor, including black humor, regarding how the Romans treated each other, treated conquered people, and people with disabilities.
The shows we’re doing in the Museum Atrium twice a month are more like the show we did 2 years ago, Excavations, but a main part of this collaboration is what we’re calling Ninja Days.
What’s Ninja Days?
For about 4 hours twice a week 3 actors are installed in the space as characters or living installations, adding to the atmosphere in the gallery. I feel the Museum is getting out of its comfort zone by integrating us in this way but it has been a particularly exciting aspect of the collaboration.
Please enlarge upon that thought.
I grew up in Cleveland and I remember going to the Museum as a boy. My first encounter with art was at CMA, so I have great fondness for it and I’m very proud of its tradition. But everything they’ve done in the past few years has been so exciting and every time they’re able to get someone new to step through the door and make the Museum a part of his life, I think that’s fantastic.
[See a trailer of Excavation here.] What’s next for Theater Ninjas?
The very next show we’re doing is called Nick and Jeremy, a coproduction with Cleveland Public Theater opening end of March. It’s an original show that’s being created by me and Nick Riley, who’s a local drummer in the band Filmstrip. This show has come out of some bizarre, pseudo-scientific, pseudo philosophical conversations Nick and I started having about a year ago, little ways of hacking the world around us, finding Easter eggs in daily life.
Then Telephone is opening end of May. It’s a very new scripted piece by a poet / playwright Arianna Rains, a beautiful, strange little play.
Last Days of Pompeii runs through 7/7/13 at Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets are $15 Adults, $13 Students and Seniors, $7 Children 6-17 (children 5 and under are free). Free to Museum Members. http://ClevelandArt.org.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.
Cleveland, OH 44106