The Bard writ small, with nunchucks

It’s safe to say there is only one theater company in the world using a cast of miniature vending machine Ninja figurines to perform Shakespearean tragedies.

It’s called the Tiny Ninja Theater, where performances are brief — about 40 minutes long — with an entirely plastic cast, and audience members can use opera glasses to get a better look at the players.

But don’t expect any comedies.

Back in 2000, Dov Weinstein, then a struggling actor living in New York City, slid a quarter into a vending machine. When he glanced at the tiny plastic figurine encased in a clear plastic egg, he came up with the idea of doing classical theater with a cast of tiny Ninjas.

“I thought, ‘Wow, so no one’s using these to do classical theater,’” said Weinstein. “I figured I’d do ‘Macbeth,’ the shortest tragedy. I knew it couldn’t be a comedy.’”

Obviously.

Fourteen years later, Weinstein and his tiny Ninjjas are ensconced in Isarel, where he’s been living with his family for the last five years. This Hanukkah, the Tiny Ninja Theater will be performing “Macbeth” at Jerusalem’s community center library in Baka.

It’s not a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” kind of production, warned Weinstein.

“It’s a serious production with tiny figurines,” he said.

A Brown University philosophy major who got hooked on acting — “I needed something to fall back on” — Weinstein, who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, has long been a fan of the Bard. He doesn’t love the comedies — “I don’t find them that funny” — and prefers to find humor in the dramas.

In New York, however, acting was a “tough scene,” said Weinstein. Hence, the scramble to find something, anything, that could pull in some income.

He proposed the Tiny Ninja idea to New  York’s fringe festival, suggesting “Macbeth” as the best possible play, given its brevity.

Much to his surprise, they loved it.

He quit his temp job and spent a summer putting the play together. The first Tiny Ninja production opened in August 2000 in a small side room of a converted car repair garage that had formerly been used to store garbage.

“I’m sure they thought that this would either be great or ‘he’s totally nuts,’” said Weinstein.

But the idea caught on, and the Tiny Ninja Theater became a favored subject in newspaper previews of the fringe festival.

“That’s what the fringe wants,” said Weinstein. “I’m sort of an innocent but cute marketing idea, tiny Ninjas and Shakespeare.”

He set off on the festival circuit, touring the world with the tiny Ninjas and eventually establishing the company as a full-time occupation. When he became more religiously observant, Weinstein worked around the Friday night shows and Saturday matinees. But after marrying in 2007 and starting a family, he transitioned out of touring and soon moved to Israel with his schoolteacher wife and their first child.

They settled in French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem, where Weinstein had lived with his family when they’d tried 30 years earlier. Weinstein’s wife teaches English in a primary school and he’s currently focused on fatherhood duties, raising the family’s three sons.

“Life has many trajectories. I’m not troubled by that,” he said.

He performs the Tiny Ninja Theater shows intermittently, mostly in his neighborhood, and has tried a few productions in Hebrew at local fringe festivals.

Now it’s time to perform “Macbeth” again.

“I’m in a really part-time mode, but it’s great to do it again,” said Weinstein. “I haven’t done ‘Macbeth’ in quite a while. It’s really fun to dust if off and run through it again.”

“Macbeth,” performed by the Tiny Ninja Theater, December 23, 5 p.m. and 8 p.m., Baka Library, Baka Matnas. NIS 35 per ticket, call or email to reserve a place: 02-671-8514 / jellyaaci@gmail.com