Manual Cinema creates immersive stories with vintage overhead projectors, shadow puppetry, and live music

See movie making unfold onstage when old-fashioned storytelling meets immersive cinematic techniques and live performance in Manual Cinema’s “Ada/Ava” at the Moss Arts Center on Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m.

The performance will be held in the Moss Arts Center’s Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, located within the Street and Davis Performance Hall at 190 Alumni Mall.

A performance collective, design studio, and film and video production company founded in 2010, Manual Cinema infuses the cinema experience with liveliness, ingenuity, and theatricality. They combine handmade shadow puppetry, film, and innovative sound and music to create immersive visual stories for stage and screen.

For the performance of “Ada/Ava,” the company uses vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and live music to tell the story of 70-year-old Ada who, bereaved of her twin sister, Ava, solitarily marks time in the patterns of a life built for two. However, a traveling 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 supernatural to explore mourning and melancholy, self, and other.

Community members will have the opportunity to learn more about Manual Cinema’s work and get hands-on experience creating with members of the company during a free workshop. Participants will engage in exercises in sound design and music composition, participate in a guided sound walk, and explore basic cinematic puppetry and visual storytelling techniques. They will also have the opportunity to create and perform short narrative pieces using the company’s equipment and puppets.

Tickets

Tickets for the performance are $20-$45 for general public and $10 for students and youth 18 and under. Tickets can be purchased online; at the Moss Arts Center's box office, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; or by calling 540-231-5300 during box office hours.

Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. Virginia Tech faculty and staff possessing a valid Virginia Tech parking permit can enter and exit the garage free of charge. Limited street parking is also available. Parking on Alumni Mall is free on weekdays after 5 p.m. and on weekends.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Kacy McAllister at 540-231-5300 or email kacy@vt.edu during regular business hours.