ArtsEmerson: Ada/Ava at Emerson Paramount Center

Delightfully gothic, beautiful and emotionally complex, Ada/Ava utilizes special effect techniques from the early age of cinema — shadow puppetry, live-action silhouettes and overhead projection — to conjure a magic spell of multimedia storytelling, complete with a live musical score. Driven by innovation, the masterful technicians of Chicago-based Manual Cinema are one of the hottest rising ensembles in America, with audiences marveling at their creations even as their methods are plainly revealed.

Beside a lighthouse somewhere on the New England coastline, twin sisters tend to the tower’s guiding light and to each other, until Ava unexpectedly dies. Here, the unrestrained imagination moves the melancholy act of mourning through of journey across the thresholds of life and death.

“Conjuring phantasms to die for in an unclassifiable story of spectral beauty.”
- The New York Times