In this world premiere, live, online event, the interdisciplinary performance collective Manual Cinema takes on the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, a visually inventive adaptation made specially for the 2020 holiday season.
An avowed holiday skeptic, Aunt Trudy has been recruited to channel her late husband Joe’s famous Christmas cheer. From the isolation of her studio apartment, she reconstructs his annual “Christmas Carol” puppet show—over a Zoom call while the family celebrates Christmas Eve under lockdown. But as Trudy becomes more absorbed in her own version of the story, the puppets take on a life of their own, and the family’s call transforms into a stunning retelling of Dickens’ timeless ghost story.
True to their name, the ingenious Chicago-based company Manual Cinema creates large-scale cinematic wonderment using intimate, lo-fi technologies: shadow puppets, overhead projectors, live-feed cameras, actors in profile. Deceptively simple in concept, their vision is deeply rooted in the nascent days of cinema, during which silent films were a limitation of technology, but not of the imagination. The company returns in this virtual event following their immensely illuminating 2016 Williams Center debut, Ada/Ava, and last season’s No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Told with hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures, silhouettes, and a live original score, Manual Cinema’s A Christmas Carol is an imaginative reinvention of a cherished holiday tradition. A Christmas Carol is appropriate for all ages and runs one hour in length.
TICKETS
General public: $20 per device—click to order.
Lafayette students, faculty, and staff, log in with your Lafayette email to reveal your price.
Presented by the Williams Center for the Arts as part of its Fall 2020 Virtual Season.