How Chicago’s Manual Cinema Made ‘Frankenstein’ Into a Magical Puppet Show
Usually on stage, performances have to choose: They can be daring and innovative, or they can land a sucker-punch to the soul. They can be tender and delicate, or they can wow with startling wizardry. They can be rooted in theater’s oldest traditions, with actors alone on a darkened stage before an audience, or they can break the form apart.
Manual Cinema, a five person performance troupe out of Chicago, somehow manages to do all of it at once . For the second time in three years the company is at the Under the Radar festival, the Public Theater’s annual showcase of new and experimental work from around the world, this time to showcase their production of Frankenstein.
It may be a 200-year-old novel, endlessly remade in classic and campy film and television, yet the group breathes new life into the story of the insentient monster.
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