Go See the Tiny Ninjas

My daughter, Emma, and I both felt a little ill, slightly nauseated, tummies grumbling, and with headaches that make you pay attention and not move too quickly. We both felt the helplessness of victims of food poisoning, facing certain doom.

Perhaps it was the heat, or the Mexican food, or the Indian food, or the Thai food, or the unidentified lunch objects from the conference I had spoken at that day.

A few days in our Nation’s Capital and Emma and I were exhausted, spent, queasy. After an afternoon at my old stomping ground, the Andre Chreky Salon, our toenails looked smashing and I was sporting slightly Grouchoreminiscent eyebrows. So we might have been sick, but stylishly so.

We had fallen onto our hotel beds at the end of the day, sweaty. “How’re you doing?” I asked a little while later, the air conditioner creating a freezer that held me in some fine molecular stasis.

“Harph…” she groaned.

“It’s time to go if we’re going to get to the Kennedy Center,” I said. “We’ve got to catch a cab now if you want to go.” What I really wanted was to be put into a medically induced coma until the sick wore off, but then again, too much of life is sleeping already and it’s not every day you can go see Macbeth at the Kennedy Center, and for free.

The show was a production by the Tiny Ninja Theatre Company. “I had noticed that there were tiny plastic ninjas in vending machines all across the city,” says founder Dov Weinstein, “but no one was using them to perform classical theater. Something had to be done.” When I read that statement on the Kennedy Center Web site, I knew I wanted to go.

Our options at this Moment In Time were narrow and narrowing the longer we remained prone. Eating dinner was out of the question. Best not tempt the gods of food poisoning. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t feel so good.”

“Me neither.”

“I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, you?” we softly lobbed the decision back and forth, eyeing each other to see who would give us the out to stay in our meat locker until morning.

We each suffered in our own silence for a few more moments, the cool sheets feeling sublime, like how a cold bathroom fl oor feels good when you’re spending significant fevered time in there, well, you know.

It was 5:25 p.m. If we had any hope of making the 6:00 p.m. show, we’d have to leave now. We both stumbled to our feet.

Once outside, the hot air felt like an assault. We got slowly into a cab— with air conditioning, blessedly—and made our way to the Kennedy Center. Each lurch of the cab sent us into deep concentrated effort. “Look at the horizon,” I whispered frantically. “Just look at the horizon.”

The Millennium Stage was completely empty when we got there. “How can that be?” I asked, peering at the chairs, struck dumb by their emptiness. “I couldn’t have made a mistake—I know it starts at 6:00 p.m.” I stood looking at the stage as if staring was a change agent and Macbeth would suddenly appear.

“Mom,” I finally heard Emma say behind me. “Mo-om!” I slowly turned to look at her. “There’s where everybody is going,” she said, pointing. I turned farther to peer at the other end of the long red hall, past the gigantic gnarly head of John F. Kennedy to another stage, one with large hordes of people around it. We were too late. There were no more seats, and the crowd kept growing, pinning us against the crowd barrier, the red rope keeping the seatless masses in line. “I need a ginger ale,” I said again, buying two Sprites that we held, reflexively, against our temples and necks.

The efficient red-coated ushers looked nervously at the ballooning crowd. One moved from side to side peering into the crowd. As the show started, the usher moved to our side. “I can take six people,” she said, looking our way. Suddenly, a swell of people swallowed us up and pushed us aside. The lucky six with the strongest arm muscles were numbered and chosen, like those small children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it seemed to me, pushing their way into the chocolate river. Emma, in this moment of insight, was —of course—dear sweet Charlie, quietly standing aside. I played her quiet, precious Uncle.

We were prepared to stand for the duration. Emma looked particularly beautiful that evening, her dark curls against pale skin and blue eyes. Feverish? Nauseated? Scottish?

Suddenly, the usher appeared just before Emma, locking eyes with her. “Come, sit,” she said, raising her gaze to include me. “Come.” She opened the red threshold, pushing back those who surged forward. “Follow me,” she said, and she was gone, lost through a billowing curtain. We followed, emerging in the very front of the hall. “Sit here,” she whispered, pointing to the fl oor before the front row of seats.

To the left was the performer himself, a man dressed completely in black, with shoulder-length puppeteer gloves, playing every part in Macbeth himself while maneuvering small plastic characters around a small black surface.

We watched Macbeth don a wee plaid strip before going into battle, marveled at lighting effects operated by the director’s toes, and laughed at his imaginative props. When Macbeth cries out, ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ a ninja-size dagger appears, hanging by a thread off a long stick. Group scenes are pre-glued; when they need to disappear, Weinstein simply picks them up and throws them offstage.

We laughed from our perch on the fl oor, looking at each other from time to time in surprise and amusement. We forgot our stomachs and Sprites. It was the delight that was delicious, the delight that only small plastic smileyfaced figurines can bring.

For a bright shining moment, this little tribe of ninjas made all the world a stage. (Sound effect: Patti laughing Nerdy English Major Snort.) Sometimes, it occurred to me as Macbeth received a standing ovation, life just comes down to showing up, or sitting upright, or at the very least, fl inging one leg at a time off the bed.

Do it Now Challenge
The motto of the Tiny Ninja Theatre is “No small parts. Only small actors.” Sounds like life.

Get yourself there. It’s too easy to stay in a darkened hotel room with the air conditioner on high and a Friends marathon on low—pretty soon you wake up and have missed the Tiny Ninja Theatre altogether. So get yourself there, even those places you dread. Get to the gym, to the hospital to visit a dying friend when you don’t know what to say or do, to the Kennedy Center to see a grown man play with tiny plastic characters attached to cardboard with duct tape while quoting Shakespeare. Get yourself to your life. Rise above the aches and pains, the nausea, exhaustion, general malaise. The show won’t run forever. Go now or you’ll miss it. And sometimes, tiny ninjas are just the miracle we need.

~Patti Digh

Patti Digh’s third book, LIFE IS A VERB, will be published by Skirt! Books in October 2008. Her award-winning blog, 37days, focuses on challenges for living more intentionally. Patti can be reached at patti@thecircleproject.com or www.pattidigh.com.