Displaying items by tag: Mary Shelley

Chicago-based Emmy Award-winning performance collective and film/video production company Manual Cinema premiered two new hand-animated films at the Obama Presidential Center Museum earlier this year. Now, the company is bringing two of its acclaimed live-action productions back to Chicago's historic Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building, where audiences can witness Manual Cinema's handmade magic created before their eyes with performers, musicians, and hundreds of puppets.

Timed to coincide with the Halloween and Christmas holidays, Manual Cinema and the Studebaker Theater co-present Manual Cinema's Frankenstein, an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Gothic horror novel, for four performances only October 30–November 1, 2026; and Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol, a unique take on the Charles Dickens classic, from December 18–27, 2026.

Tickets for Frankenstein and Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol at the Studebaker Theater (410 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago) go on sale Friday, August 28. Tickets are $35-$75, with student tickets available for $25 with proof of ID. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit fineartsbuilding.com/studebaker.

"Manual Cinema is a truly exceptional team of multidisciplinary artists, as demonstrated by the fact that they were tapped to create two short films for the Obama Presidential Center Museum," says Jacob Harvey, Managing Artistic Director of the Fine Arts Building and Studebaker Theater. "We're thrilled to bring their productions of Frankenstein and Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol back to the Studebaker this year, where audiences can experience the magic of their live-action, handmade filmmaking in person."

"We're so excited to be returning to the Studebaker Theater with Frankenstein and Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol!" adds Drew Dir, Co-Artistic Director of Manual Cinema. "Our adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic gothic novel has been touring the Western Hemisphere for years, and we're thrilled to bring it back home for an encore Halloween engagement. Meanwhile, Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol has become a beloved holiday tradition for our fans—we're thrilled to give Chicago audiences another chance to see it!"

SHOW DETAILS

Frankenstein

Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building

410 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago

October 30–November 1, 2026

In Manual Cinema's thrilling version of the classic Gothic tale Frankenstein, the Chicago-based performance collective imaginatively combines shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and live sound effects and music in a haunting show unlike any other. The production stitches together the fictional story of Frankenstein with the biography of the original novel's author, Mary Shelley, to create an unexpected tale about the beauty and horror of creation.

Frankenstein is adapted from the novel by Mary Shelley, with a concept by Drew Dir. The production is devised by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace and Julia Miller. Original music and sound design are by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter.

Performance times:

Friday, Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m. (press opening)

Saturday, Oct. 31 at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 1 at 3 p.m.

Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol

Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building

410 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago

December 18–27, 2026

Featuring hundreds of handmade puppets, immersive sound design and a stunning live score, Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol is a holiday show unlike any other. Avowed holiday skeptic Aunt Trudy has been reluctantly recruited to carry on her late husband Joe's tradition of spreading Christmas cheer, and recreates his annual Christmas Carol puppet show over Zoom while the family celebrates from afar. But as Trudy dives deeper into the story, the puppets take on a life of their own and the family call transforms into a breathtaking, one-of-a-kind cinematic reimagining of Dickens's classic ghost story.

Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol is adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens and devised by Manual Cinema, with additional writing by Nate Marshall. Storyboards and puppet design are by Drew Dir, with original score and sound design by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter, and lighting design by Trey Brazeal.

Performance times:

Friday, Dec. 18 at 7:30 p.m. (press opening)

Saturday, Dec. 19 at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Sunday, Dec. 20 at 2 p.m.

Wednesday, Dec. 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Dec. 24 at 2 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 26 at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Sunday, Dec. 27 at 2 p.m.

About the Fine Arts Building and Studebaker Theater

The Fine Arts Building, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2023, is a home for art in all forms: from pioneers like Poetry magazine's founding publisher Harriet Monroe, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, illustrator W. W. Denslow, sculptor Lorado Taft and the Chicago Little Theatre, to the ongoing legacies of painters, musicians, booksellers, puppeteers, dancers, photographers and craftspeople who inhabit the building today, the Fine Arts Building is buzzing with more than a century of Chicago creativity and innovation.

A Chicago Landmark since 1978, the building features original Art Nouveau murals from the late 19th century and the Studebaker Theater, one of the city's oldest and most significant live theatrical venues. Following a major multi-million-dollar renovation of the Studebaker led by Berger Realty Group and completed in 2022, the theater has been home to NPR's popular news quiz show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" and has hosted performances from new musicals including 44: The Obama Musical, Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile, and Jim Henson's Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, along with productions Ava: The Secret Conversations starring Elizabeth McGovern and Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol. For more information, visit fineartsbuilding.com.

About Manual Cinema

Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award-winning 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 stories for stage and screen. Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and live music, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality.

The company was awarded an Emmy in 2017 for "The Forger," a video created for The New York Times, and named Chicago Artists of the Year in 2018 by the Chicago Tribune. Their shadow puppet animations were featured in the 2021 film remake of Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions. In collaboration with the Obama Foundation and Batwin + Robin Productions, Manual Cinema created two animated films for the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago, Ten Letters a Day and Power of Place.

Recent productions include Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, based on books by Mo Willems, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and a revamped production of The Magic City, based on Edith Nesbit's 1910 novel. In 2023, Manual Cinema completed production on their first self-produced short film, Future Feeling, and toured with folk rock band Iron & Wine the following year. In Summer 2025, Manual Cinema premiered their latest feature production, The 4th Witch—a bold and imaginative inversion of Macbeth that is now touring.

Really? Another ‘Frankenstein’? The 2018/19 season was the year of ‘Frankenstein’. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic thriller, four theatre companies produced wildly different adaptations of the novel. If you find yourself wondering whether these companies knew of each other’s productions, they surely did. The beauty of the Chicago theatre landscape is that there’s a lot of room for good storytelling. Lookingglass Theatre wraps up their season with a bold adaptation from the same team who brought us ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Lookingglass Alice’.

Conceived and directed by David Catlin, this take on ‘Frankenstein’ is as visually stunning as it is insightful. The in-the-round staging makes this telling feel more active, as the entire performance space is used throughout. Shifting around in your seat feels like a more engaging way to view the show. Not knowing where the monster or the next loud sound will come from, heightens the sense of terror. Catlin’s production is scary. Many of the other productions discounted that this is a horror story originally intended by Mary Shelley to scare guests at a party.

While nearly all the productions tried to weave Mary Shelley’s personal life into the retelling, Catlin’s version cuts right to the heart. In fluid transitions between Shelley’s life and ‘Frankenstein’, we get to see the range of Cordelia Dewdney’s talents as an actress. The show may be titled after the scientist, but this is a play about Mary Shelley. Dewdney’s dialogue as Mary Shelley is heartbreaking when considering her real life. Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel also turns in a strong performance in a variety of characters, all of which she plays comically large with a faux pregnancy belly.

The balance of good casting, inventive storytelling and arresting staging distinguish this production. Catlin has chosen to frame his version almost as children playing dress up while exchanging ghost stories. And since the characters are adults, there’s a simmering sexiness to this production. Sexy and ‘Frankenstein’ are two words rarely seen in the same sentence, but somehow Lookingglass achieves just that, making this a delicious evening at the theatre. Thrills, chills and titillation, the pillars of entertainment.

Even though we are now 201 years out from the original publication of ‘Frankenstein’, don’t sleep on this striking production at Lookingglass. For those with a grey memory of the novel from high school, or only familiar with the Universal-Boris-Karloff film version, Lookingglass serves up an unforgettable night of scary fun.

*Extended through September 1st

You may be wondering why four of the city’s most formidable houses are each mounting productions of ‘Frankenstein’ this season. You may be also asking yourself which, if any, to see. It appears that Lifeline, Remy Bumppo, Court Theatre and Lookingglass have all included unique adaptations of the sci-fi classic. More than likely it is because 2018 marks 200 years since a young Mary Shelley published her seminal work. Of course, October is a pretty great time to stage any sort of Halloween theatre, but there’s something about the production running at Remy Bummpo that doesn’t quite feel like a horror story.

From an adaptation by Nick Dear and directed by Ian Frank, Remy Bummpo brings a great deal of humanity to this stage production. Dear’s adaptation was a success when it premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London back in 2011. It went on to be live broadcast in American movie theaters in 2012. This particular script comes with fanfare. The RNT production was directed by Danny Boyle and starred a then fledgling Benedict Cumberbatch. Something interesting Ian Frank borrowed from the London staging was the interchangeable casting of the Creature and Victor, played here by Nick Sandys and Greg Matthew Anderson. The two switch roles every other night. Sandys portrayed the Creature in Tuesday night’s opening.

Dear’s swift moving script begins at the creation scene, arguably the most dynamic moment of Shelley’s source material. Not too many frills here but the device saves quite a bit of exposition, because honestly who doesn’t already know the basics of the story? For those unfamiliar with Shelley’s original text, this is where the plot might diverge from popular memory. Dear’s script maintains a great faithfulness to the novel rather than the Boris Karloff monster movie.

Sandys performance as the Creature is more tragic than scary. Though, Kristy Leigh Hall’s special effect makeup makes Sandys unrecognizable and very menacing. The Creature, like a baby, begins naked and ignorant of the world around. Over the course of the 90-minute play, we watch a cruel world educate the outcast Creature into becoming a monster bent on revenge. Sandys eventual monologues about the desire for love are as haunting as the murder scenes. The script intellectualizes the Creature in a way that makes the audience pity him instead of fear him.

Ian Frank’s production is intimate and minimal. A sleek stage design by Joe Schermoly gives this production a disorienting effect. It’s almost to say, forget what you think you know about ‘Frankenstein’. In fact, this ‘Frankenstein’ may not even be a true horror story. Unlike Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ or Gaston Leroux’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’ – ‘Frankenstein’ sets itself aside as a story of scientific failure and the condition of humans to fear what we do not understand. It’s a story about the human need for love and this production tugs at the heart more often than it curdles the blood. Mary Shelley would appreciate the depth this adaptation gives to her most important contribution to literature.

Through November 11 at Remy Bummpo. Theatre Wit 1229 W Belmont Ave. 773-975-8150