Manual Cinema's FRANKENSTEIN to be Presented at The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College

THE PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, PURCHASE COLLEGE will present Manual Cinema's unique production of Frankenstein on Sunday, October 20, at 7pm, less than two weeks before Halloween.

Manual Cinema is a Chicago-based performance collective that imaginatively combines shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, sound effects, and live music to create unique theatrical experiences.

In their retelling of the Gothic tale of Frankenstein, Manual Cinema stitches together the classic tale with the biography of the original novel's author, Mary Shelley, to create an unexpected story about the beauty and horror of creation. The real-life and fictional narratives of Shelley, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein's monster expose how family, community, and education shape personhood - or destroy it by their absence.

The performance will be followed by a meet-the-artist encounter for the audience. They will be invited on stage to speak directly to the artists, handle the puppets, ask questions, and take photos.

Manual Cinema will also offer a hands-on shadow puppet workshop for students and residents of Broadview Senior Living that will take place the day before the performance.

Tickets for Manual Cinema's Frankenstein are affordably priced at $40-$20 and can be purchased on The Performing Arts Center's website, www.artscenter.org. Tickets for children and students are always 50% off the regular price. This performance is recommended for ages 12 and up.

This engagement of Manual Cinema is made possible in part through the ArtsCONNECT program of Mid Atlantic Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

About the artists

MANUAL CINEMA is a performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive visual stories for stage and screen. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality.

Manual Cinema practices a form of puppetry that they like to call "cinematic shadow puppetry." A hybrid of theater, film, and puppetry, the process marries ancient principles of shadowplay with modern cinematography. It was developed using an instrument that is familiar to many seasoned shadow puppeteers: the old-school overhead projector, which can emulate the functions of a film camera and create cinematic montage. Most Manual Cinema performances integrate hundreds of paper shadow puppets and colored slides with actors performing in silhouette.

Performance Details

Manual Cinema: Frankenstein
Sunday, October 20, 7pm
The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College
735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577
Tickets and more information: https://www.artscenter.org/events/manual-cinema-frankenstein/

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