The Moss Arts Center invites everyone to experience an unforgettable take on a holiday favorite, told through the colorful and wildly creative lens of innovative puppet company Manual Cinema’s two livestreamed performances of Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol” on Friday, Dec. 11, at 8 p.m., and on Sunday, Dec. 13, at 4 p.m.
A world-premiere online event created for audiences of all ages specifically for the 2020 holiday season, each show will be livestreamed from Manual Cinema’s Chicago studio. In the company’s signature fashion, hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures and silhouettes come together with a live original score to imaginatively reinvent this cherished holiday classic.
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 “A Christmas Carol” puppet show over a Zoom call while the family celebrates Christmas Eve confined apart. 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 cinematic adaptation of Dickens’ classic ghost story.
An Emmy Award-winning performance collective, design studio, and film and video production company, Manual Cinema brings liveliness, ingenuity and theatricality as it combines handmade shadow puppetry, film and innovative sound and music to create immersive visual stories for stage and screen. The collective also appeared at the Moss Arts Center in 2018.
Tickets are $15 for the general public and free for Virginia Tech students. Tickets can be purchased online; at the Moss Arts Center’s box office, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; or by calling 540-231-5300 during box office hours.
This unique showing will also offer an all-ages exclusive and behind-the-scenes peek at and with company members, who reveal how they build and bring to life their new masterpiece. This free event will be held at the Moss Arts Center on Thursday, Dec. 11 at noon.