The Story of Ninja Mom™
The dream of Ninja Mom started about 18 years ago when Ren Hanami began creating a female ninja action hero called Ninja Girl. Ren calls her a She-ro -- who was a sexy crime fighter inspired by the comic book characters Shado from The Green Arrow series and She by Billy Tucci. Well, several years and outlines later Ninja Girl morphed into Ninja Mom, a do-gooder mom with some substantial secrets. Then Ren met the talented writer Darrah Cloud while acting in one of her original plays at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, CA. The two began collaborating on a story merging Ren's Ninja Mom characters and culture with Darrah's soccer mom superhero story from her screenplay Mother's Day and it was magic. There are three screenplays which round out the whole Ninja Mom family. Ryan Angel entered the picture with her producing passion and vision for the whole Ninja Mom entertainment franchise. The chemistry and common mission of creating quality entertainment with empowering themes and the belief in giving back is propelling them forward. Ren's long time friend Nathan Wang joined the team as the official Ninja Mom composer and has created the perfect Ninja Mom theme song.
The Creative Team
Multi-talented REN HANAMI brings her brand of "Aloha Spirit" to everything she does. Ren acts, sings and dances on stage, screen and television. This dynamo has been in the entertainment business since her first dancing job at Disneyland as a teenager. Earning a degree in Theater Arts from U.C.L.A. gave Ren a strong foundation for acting in all areas of the business and she started her professional career while still in school landing a role in A Flower Drum Song.
She has enjoyed many regional stage productions of Company, My Fair Lady, The King and I, South Pacific with Reba McEntire at The Hollywood Bowl, and most recently Makeover at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. Ren is also very proud of her early leading roles in Performance Anxiety and Canton Jazz Club at East West Players, the oldest Asian American theater in the country.
Her film and television credits include working alongside Academy Award winners Glenn Close in Airforce One, Martin Landau and Lee Grant in "The Ali Gertz Story," Patty Duke in "One Woman's Courage," and Sally Field in a recurring role on "ER," as well as numerous other network series such as "Grey's Anatomy," "Without A Trace," and "The Storm."
Ren is greatly influenced by her multi-cultural family, especially the strong ties to her Hawaiian heritage. One of Ren's most important on-going roles is as the television host and spokesperson for AAA Hawaii.
DARRAH CLOUD’S most recent work, in addition to Ninja Mom: Mother’s Day, includes Makeover! a theatrical musical based on the life of Estee Lauder, as well as new plays, Metamorphosis 4G, commissioned by Cincinnati Playhouse, Our Suburb and The Posthumous Democrat. Her stage adaptation of Disney’s classic, Snow White, is playing at Disneyland. She has written extensively for television, including movies of the week for CBS, NBC and Hallmark.
Her adaptations of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and The Boxcar Children, with composer Kim D. Sherman, have toured all over the United States. O Pioneers! was filmed for American Playhouse with Mary McDonnell in the lead. Her play The Stick Wifecontinues to be produced all over the U.S. and Europe. Hearts Are Wild, an original rock musical with composer George Griggs opened in Pittsburgh at City Theater in January, 2006 and Sabina, a chamber musical about Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein, with book by Willy Holtzman and music by Louise Beach, is in the works, as is Club California, a musical about prostitutes in Kosovo, with composer Craig Safan. Heartland, an original musical, also with Kim D. Sherman, has been produced in regional theaters since 2000. She has won numerous awards, including an NAMT Development grant at Human Race Theatre, a Rockefeller grant, an NEA and a Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Award. She is an alumna of the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa (poetry and playwriting) and New Dramatists in New York City. She teaches in the MFA Program in Writing at Goddard College.
RYAN ANGEL has been in the entertainment industry for twenty plus years. She began as a child actor and continued her studies at the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at NYU on an acting scholarship where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with distinction in acting. During her time at NYU and beyond she explored multiple aspects of stage and screen production. She worked extensively while living in NYC in all areas of production. From scenic design and directing to line producing she studied many different aspects of bringing a script to life.
Having established a presence in LA she has formed AngelBaby Productions, setting a new standard of excellence in filmmaking. She is currently working on producing three feature films. Picture This a romantic comedy, Ninja Mom, a peri-menopausal superhero film and 200 Hours, a biopic about Peter Tripp, a DJ in the 50’s. Her goal and the goal of her company is to continue to produce high quality movies that entertain, delight, inspire and inform.
NATHAN WANG started his musical studies at the age of four. When he was nine, he was accepted to the University of Southern California to study musical theory and composition. However, after high school he decided to get a liberal arts education from a small campus, and graduated from Pomona College and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Oxford University, England. After two years overseas, Nathan returned to Los Angeles to pursue his musical interest.
He is proud of having started his career in theater, having composed music for shows as The Traveler at the Mark Taper Forum, Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Old Globe in San Diego and Bouncers at the Tiffany Theater. Nathan has composed over the years for EastWest Players, the oldest Asian American theater in the United States. He has worked on shows there as Big Hunk of Burnin' Love, Performance Anxiety, Sisters Matsumoto, and for Chay Yew's Reds. He has written two musicals for EastWest which received NEA funding: The Canton Jazz Club, which was one of EastWest Players' most successful musical runs in the history of the theater, and a reading of The Cathayian Pirate.
Nathan's music can be heard on all genres. He composed for the CD interactive games, "The Muppets Treasure Island" and "The Return to Zork". For television, Nathan has worked on "Eekstravanza", the popular animated series now for six years on Fox, and has written for shows such as "China Beach" at Warner, as well as "The Excellent Adventures of Bill and Ted" at Lorimar. Nathan's movie credits include scoring the Jackie Chan's Asian versions of Rumble in the Bronx., First Strike and Columbia's release of Jackie's Who Am I? He worked with Hans Zimmer for an October film, The Last Days for DreamWorks, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.