Since our first performance in 2006, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts (formerly Theater Ninjas) has built a reputation for boundary-pushing work noted for its range of styles and content, highly-stylized physical staging, site-specific production, and experimentation with interaction and audience agency. We have been committed to producing a mix of world/regional premieres and original productions including devised plays, classical reinventions, participatory game-based art experiences, and work-in-progress showcases for theatre and dance. At the core of our identity is the idea of theater as an event, and everything we do feeds into our goal of creating extra-ordinary experiences that resonate with audiences long after the show is over.
Jeremy Paul is the founder and Artistic Director of Maelstrom Collaborative Arts since 2006. Primarily working in the field of devised theater, Jeremy has led the creation of the original productions Who We Used To Be, Don't Wander Off, Broken Codes, The Turing Machine, The Grand Celebration of the Celestial Mystery, TingleTangle, Code: Preludes, The Excavation, and Marble Cities. He is also the co-creator of the original works The Last Day (with the Maelstrom Cadre), NICK&JEREMY (with Nick Riley), Absence (with Michael Rau) and The Beetlebug and the Bad Worm (with Faye Hargate). Jeremy has also directed the world and regional premieres of many plays in Northeast Ohio, including Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys, Stranded on Earth, Black Cat Lost, My Barking Dog, Inoculations and Anna Bella Eema. Jeremy graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut with dual majors in Theater and Film, and has post-graduate training with the Pig Iron Theatre Company, New World Performance Lab and the Celebration Barn International School for the Performing Arts. Jeremy is a recipient of CPAC Creative Workforce Fellowships in 2012 and 2016.
Lauren Joy Fraley is a performer, theater-maker, and teaching artist who joined the Cadre in 2016, and is now currently serving as Connectivity Director for Maelstrom Collaborative Arts. She has contributed to the creation of past MCA productions including Who We Used to Be, Don't Wander Off, The Last Day, and Broken Codes, which featured Auxiliary, her original short-form work inspired by her experiences with Maelstrom Collaborative Arts' after school STEAM club for girls at Orchard STEM school. She will lead this program again in spring 2018, this time culminating in Mystery Box, a new explorable story (created with Jeremy Paul) based on the life of Ada Lovelace, the first computer scientist who was "writing code for a machine that did not yet exist."
Sequoia Bostick is a freelance Illustrator and designer living in Cleveland Ohio. She has collaborated with Maelstrom Collaborative Arts on design for Who We Used to Be, animation for Don't Wander Off, and illustration & design for the interactive "Landmarks" game at Cleveland Public Theatre's Station Hope, 2017. By day she teaches art to kids of all ages as a Resident Teaching Artist. By night (and sometimes part of the day) she creates crafts for kids, draws comics, and runs Cleveland’s own all-ages comic anthology Vagabond Comics. She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of art with a BFA in Illustration in 2014.
Marcia Custer is a performance artist with an interest in both the bizarre and the sublime. Her premiere one-woman noise-comedy i went down to the water and found myselfie there (co-produced by Cleveland Public Theater) has been seen in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. She holds a B.A. in Dance from Kent State University and completed a post-baccalaureate program at Headlong Performance Institute (Philadelphia). Based in Cleveland, you can find her singing in freak-pop band Half an Animal or acting in the online series 2 Divorced Moms with artist Ben Oblivion.
Meredith L. King makes words and sounds collide on the stage, including work as a playwright, performer, lyricist, and composer. With Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, Meredith has created work for Short Form, Bricolage and Saturnalia in 2018. Recent credits include work with Cleveland Public Theatre’s Entry Point (Saturated Fat and Bipolar Mixtape) & Station Hope Programs (Under/Stand), and Talespinner Children’s Theatre’s PLAYground (The Garden of In-Between). As a director, performer and musician, Meredith has worked with Round House Theatre’s Heyday Players, dog & pony dc, eXtreme eXchange, The Hegira and African Continuum Theatre, including participating in the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival. Meredith received a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A from Yale University. She has worked professionally as an arts administrator, teacher and community organizer on the national level. Meredith served a three-year term as a judge for Washington, DC’s regional theatre awards, The Helen Hayes Awards, and has also served six years as a reader/judge for the Source Theatre Festival.