“theatrical magic” - The New Yorker
Manual Cinema’s Ada/Ava TELUS STUDIO THEATRE I CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT UBC
The Beyond Words series is presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, and explores the power of storytelling in performance both as an agent of change and as a means of igniting conversation. Past artists have included John K. Samson, Ivan Coyote, Shane Koyczan, Tanya Tagaq, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, and Brendan McLeod. The Chan Centre gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Chan Endowment Fund, the UBC Faculty of Arts, The Government of Canada, The Georgia Straight, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts and Ethical Bean Coffee.
Coming up next... Sign up for our monthly e-news at chancentre.com and be the first to hear when the 2017/18 Beyond Words series, part of the Chan Centre’s 20th anniversary season, is announced this spring!
Noche Flamenca’s Antigona Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca unite ancient Greek tragedy and flamenco in this poignant, multidisciplinary triumph.
CHAN CENTRE AT UBC I Tickets and info at chancentre.com
“an unclassifiable story of spectral beauty” – New York Times
Tonight’s performance will be approximately 60 minutes with no intermission. Please remember to turn off your phones, and note that photography and recording is not permitted. Thank you!
Ada/Ava
Bereaved of her twin sister Ava, septuagenarian Ada solitarily marks time in the patterns of a life built for two. However, a travelling carnival and a trip to a mirror maze plunges her into a journey across the thresholds of life and death. Set in a landscape of the New England gothic, Ada/Ava uses a story of the fantastic and super natural to explore mourning and melancholy, self and other.
Manual Cinema Founded in 2010, Manual Cinema is a performance
collective, design studio, and film/video production company. With expertise in choreography, movement, composition, interactive media, and puppeteering, Manual Cinema’s Co-Artistic Directors, Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller and Kyle Vegter are a formidable force whose talent has taken them around the world. In addition to feature-length, live cinematic shadow puppet shows (Lula Del Ray, Ada/Ava, Mementos Mori) and site-specific installations (La Celestina, My Soul’s Shadow), the group has been called to develop music videos for Sony Masterworks, Gabriel Kahane, and the GRAMMY Award-winning Eighth Blackbird. The company’s more recent projects include an adaption of Peter Pan with American playwright and theatre producer Randy Weiner, as well as an immersive adaption of The Little Prince, and a new feature-length work based on Edith Nesbit’s novel, Magic City. Manual Cinema also recently worked in collaboration with The New York Times to create shadow animations and original music for The Forger, a short film about the life and work of Adolfo Kaminsky—a man who saved thousands of lives by forging passports to help people flee the Nazis during WWII.
Cast and Crew
CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
DREW DIR has worked as a puppeteer, playwright, dramaturg, and director in Chicago and London. Most recently, his short play The Lurker Radio Hour was voted Best Production at Collaboraction’s Sketchbook 8 at the Steppenwolf Garage; his Sketchbook plays have been called “daring” by the Chicago Tribune and “ballsy” by Time Out Chicago. He holds an MA in Text and Performance Studies from King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Currently, Drew is Resident Dramaturg at Court Theatre and a Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. SARAH FORNACE is a choreographer, performer, and narrative theorist based in Chicago. Her interests include: narrative structure, theories of time, non-verbal storytelling, spectacle, and interactions with (in)animate objects. She has choreographed fights and stunts for Depaul University, Court Theatre, Red Orchid Theatre, Steppenwolf’s Garage Rep. series, The New Colony, Adventure Stage, and elsewhere. She has performed with Redmoon, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Collaboraction, and Babes with Blades. Sarah has been a member of Blair Thomas and Company (puppetry) and Boum Twa (ladder acrobatics). She is also a member of Cirque du Soleil’s artist database. She currently teaches movement at Columbia College Chicago. BEN KAUFFMAN is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates installations, interactive media, video, and participatory environments. His most recent work has been exhibited at CUNY’s Baruch College and Freshkills Park on Staten Island, and he has given talks and workshops at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York University, Baruch College, and Parsons School of Design. He is also the co-creator of the interactive web-based zine, SMOG. He holds a Master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). JULIA MILLER specializes in the tactile and movement arts. She is a director, puppeteer, and graphic designer. Manual Cinema provides her with an outlet for many artistic impulses, including but not limited to breathing life into the inanimate, making delicate small things, and telling stories without words. She holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University and has studied mask, clown and devised theatre under Teatro Punto, Familie Flöz, and Double Edge Theatre. KYLE VEGTER is a composer, sound designer, theatre artist, and Managing Artistic Director of Manual Cinema. As a composer, he has been commissioned by such groups as TIGUE, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, the Chicago Composer’s Orchestra, and Homeroom Chicago. His production credits span genres, and include recent releases by Thin Hymns, Spektral Quartet, Tim Munro (of Eighth Blackbird), and Color Card. His past Composer/ Sound Designer credits with Manual Cinema include Lula Del Ray, Ada/Ava, FJORDS, and various other performance and video projects. He has been an artist in residence at High Concept Laboratories, and co-founded Chicago’s only contemporary classical music cassette label Parlour Tapes+.
PERFORMERS
4
VANESSA S. VALLIERE (Ada) is currently in her sixth season as a member of an ensemble of performers for Tour De Fat, a national touring festival. She has performed in Chicago with the Neo-Futurists and The New Colony and in New York City at Lincoln Center Education with Theatre Unspeakable, a Chicago company that she has been devising, touring and performing with for five years. Vanessa frequently performs her short solo clown/puppetry shows in Chicago and she also tours her work nationally in Le Tigre, a one-hundred-seat vaudeville tent. She has also presented her work in Brooklyn, Asheville, and Los Angeles and has developed an evening length clown/puppetry show with the support of Chicago’s Pivot Arts. Vanessa has performed with Big Nazo Puppet Company in Providence, RI and she is a proud nerd-cheerleader for Chicago’s thirty-piece circus punk marching band: Mucca Pazza. This is her first production with Manual Cinema.
KARA DAVIDSON (Ava) is happy to be returning to perform with Manual Cinema after being a part of previous runs of Ada/Ava - New York City (3LD), Orange County (Segerstrom Center), and Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts). Kara is an actor and playwright living in Chicago, where she has worked with The House Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and The Plagiarists. Regionally, she has also worked with Actors Theatre of Louisville, Nebraska Repertory Theatre, Aporia Theatre (NYC), Project Y (NYC), and Nightpath Theatre (MN). She holds degrees in Theatre Performance and French from the University of Nebraska and trains and performs aerial/circus arts. SAM DEUTSCH (Puppeteer, MC Company Member) is a performer and designer based in Chicago. He is a proud company member of both Manual Cinema and The Inconvenience, a multidisciplinary producing organization. Select performance and design credits include: Denise (the fish) in Mistakes Were Made (World Premiere: A Red Orchid Theatre, Chicago / Off-B’way: Barrow Street Theatre – 2011 Henry Hewes Design Award nominee) and Zoopy (the dog) in Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money (World Premiere: Chicago Children’s Theatre / Off-B’Way: The Atlantic Theatre). ALEX ELLSWORTH (Cello, Vocals) is active in a wide range of genres including contemporary and traditional classical, rock and chamber pop, experimental performance art and anything else he can get his hands on. His eclectic musical experience has included performances at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scotland; Symphony Center in Chicago, USA and at the International Musikinstitut in Darmstadt, Germany. Alex is a cellist of Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Music Director of the children’s orchestral program M.U.S.I.C. Inc., and a founding member of the contemporary performance ensemble Mocrep. MICHAEL HILGER (Guitar, Synthesizer, Vocals, MC Company Member) is a composer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist based in Chicago, IL. His sound design and composition credits include Redmoon Theater’s 2012 Youth Spectacle, MC’s own Show & Tell, the short film KEPT by Kacey Meyer, Amygdala Rest by Erasing the Distance, and Mariko’s Magical Mix, a collaboration between Hubbard Street Dance and Manual Cinema. He has produced two EPs with THIN HYMNS, a group he founded and fronts. He is currently working on new music and performing solo under the name MICHAEL ALBERT. CHARLOTTE LONG (Puppeteer) is a Chicago native with degrees from Sarah Lawrence College in Literature and Theatre. She is a puppeteer, dance theatre artist, actor, solo writer and movement teacher, and often tours with Manual Cinema. Other favorite puppet and non-puppet related credits include: The Plagiarists, Oracle Theatre, Tympanic Theatre, Right Brain Project, Rough House Theatre, The Ruckus, Lifeline Theatre, Factory Theatre and the Whiskey Rebellion. You can find her occasionally performing her dance theatre pieces at Salonathon on Monday nights. IZZY OLIVE (SFX, Vocals) is a Chicago-based musician and writer who performs as Half Gringa. A graduate of the University of Chicago, she has worked with Chicago tape label Parlour Tapes+ as an audio engineer and with First Floor Theatre Company as a composer and writer. She spends a lot of her work thinking about different ways to present music and theater simultaneously. MYRA SU (Puppeteer) is a narrative artist specializing in storytelling through puppetry and theatre. Her primary medium is shadow puppetry, though she has also been experimenting with puppetry across multiple media – paper craft, sculpture, video, animation, and taxidermy. She often performs at Nasty, Brutish & Short, a quarterly puppet cabaret in Chicago. Most recently she was selected to perform at the 2016 National Puppet Slam in Atlanta, GA. She has worked with Manual Cinema since 2013. Myra holds a BA with honors in Theatre and Anthropology from the University of Chicago.
5
STAFF MIKE USREY (Production Manager, Sound Engineer) has mixed in around a hundred venues worldwide, ranging from large outdoor festivals to theaters and clubs. He toured internationally for three years with the band Dark Dark Dark (Minneapolis, MN) as front of house engineer. He has also toured with Pillars and Tongues (Chicago, IL), A Hawk and a Hacksaw (Albuquerque, NM), Royal Canoe (Winnipeg, MB Canada) and Pattern is Movement (Philadelphia, PA). He has been the front of house sound engineer for Manual Cinema since 2014. SHELBY GLASGOW (Company/ Stage Manager) is a stage manager and a gypsy. Shelby has been fortunate enough to stage manage in regional theatres from coast to coast over the last few years, and has had the pleasure of touring/traveling with ArtsPower National Touring Theatre, Nebraska Theatre Caravan, A Crew of Patches, and B Street Theatre. Shelby is so excited that her work with Manual Cinema has brought her back to the lovely Chicago, where over the years she has stage managed for amazing companies like Lookingglass (Adventures with Aladdin), Lifeline Theatre (The Killer Angels and A Tale of Two Cities), The Strange Tree Group (The Three Faces of Dr. Crippen), Sideshow Theatre Company (Idomeneus, Maria/Stuart, The Burden of Not Having A Tail), and many others.
Old art forms breathe new life into theatre By Taryn Plater How does a “machine art” create an emotional connection with an audience? In a world where we are so saturated with entertainment, there is something particularly exciting about the uniqueness of live theatre. And when theatre itself challenges its own convention and bridges genres – that is something even more special. Manual Cinema has captivated its audiences since 2010, using primarily paper and light from old projectors. Masters of their art form, the members of Manual Cinema have created three full-length live theatre productions, including Ava/Ada, two site-specific shows, and numerous collaborations. With a fascinating combination of the cinematic and theatrical, digital and analogue, light and shadow, this Chicago troupe continues to deliver performances that captivate and enchant in a way most of us would never expect from shadow puppetry. Manual Cinema’s chosen medium is thousands of years old with its roots in China and India. The ancient art of shadow puppetry, realized with vintage machines, cannot help but evoke a sense of nostalgia. Often nostalgia runs the risk of becoming more cliché than romantic, but Manual Cinema’s unique take converts this nostalgia to a rich backdrop for charming stories and impressive craftsmanship.
“Such creations of young artists, for whom boundaries of tone and discipline are increasingly irrelevant, are paradoxically both nostalgic and prescient. Welcome to a brave new sensibility that’s corny and cutting-edge, backward and forward looking, at the same time.” (The New York Times, 2015)
6
The stories often have a magical or surreal element, or references to classic films, suggesting an attachment to the past. At the same time, the troupe is always developing new techniques that elevate the work and help breathe life into each story. This combination of past and future is the magic ingredient. It lets paper cut-outs create an emotional connection. It allows a cinematic show to edge into the world of live theatre. It transcends mediums, genres, eras.
Similar to the way artists are experimenting with the role of live theatre in our world of ultra-accessible entertainment, Manual Cinema is challenging the role of analog technology in a digital age. Live music, analog projections, and performers combine to create shows that are not just on par with the experience of seeing a movie, but even more charming for their ingenuity.
They “[ask] us to accept the physical and emotional integrity of machine-art” (Northwest Chicago Film Society, 2012)
Even in the use of the most basic tool - light and shadow - Manual Cinema takes something we would think of as binary, black and white, and makes it transient by playing with depth and transparency. Add to this mixture a live theatre audience, and you have one very unique mass cultural experience. True to its exploratory nature, Manual Cinema has applied its unique art form to many different contexts. Collaborations with opera, symphony, and radio (to name only a few) have enlivened these genres, each of which has a similar issue with appearing antiquated. In each case, the collaborators had the opportunity to re-contextualize their own art form, and create something exciting for both the artists and the audience. A 2015 collaboration with the Belgian Royal Opera on a production of Hansel and Gretel had Manual Cinema live-streaming projections of its whimsical visuals onto a screen as the opera was performed. This introduced the new challenge of reacting to a conductor in real-time, and added another level of collaboration to the group’s shadow puppetry. Next up in 2017 is an immersive adaptation of The Little Prince, a fourth feature-length show based on the novel Magic City by Edith Nesbit, and a short film based on Virginia Wolf’s The Haunted House. In October 2017, Manual Cinema will be featured in the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW series – yet another exciting new collaboration with an unexpected partner. This enthusiasm for new approaches to performance art is valuable and, many believe, essential to the future of theatre. The moment you take traditions and conventions of a genre for granted is the moment you take an audience’s investment for granted. Manual Cinema has become an international success through the blending of new approaches with familiar traditions. These shows are worthwhile experiences because there is nothing quite like them. Taryn Plater is in her fourth year at UBC, pursuing a dual degree in Music and Linguistics, and a Master of Management. She is passionate about expanding the role of the performing arts in our society, and is currently Marketing and Communications Assistant at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.
7
A Sound Experience Subscribe and save up to 25% Tickets and info at chancentre.com
Dianne Reeves – FEB 22 Noche Flamenca’s Antigona – MAR 12 Anda Union – MAR 26 Max Raabe and Palast Orchester – APR 9