Arizona Arts Live — formerly UA Presents — is among more than a dozen arts presenters nationwide to present the world premiere of Manual Cinema’s “Christmas Carol” this weekend.
The hour-long performance, which uses hundreds of paper puppets, silhouettes and a live original score, will livestream five times between Friday, Dec. 11, and Sunday, Dec. 13, through the performing arts platform Marquee TV. The performances can be screen cast through Apple TV, Chromecast, Amazon Firestick and Roku.
“Christmas Carol” is Manual Cinema’s 2020 COVID-19 take on the Charles Dickens classic, written with isolated audiences in mind. The critically acclaimed Chicago-based performance collective that has created dozens of immersive stories for stage and screen since it was founded in 2010 reimagines the Scrooge Christmas story taking place over Zoom.
Here’s the storyline: With the passing last summer of Uncle Joe, possibly from COVID-19, Aunt Trudy, a holiday skeptic, has been tasked with presenting the annual “Christmas Carol” over Zoom to family members locked down in their homes. From the isolation of her studio apartment, Aunt Trudy pulls out Uncle Joe’s box of puppets and old Christmas cards and tries to recreate his version of the story. Along the way, her story of working long hours at the expense of a personal life seeps into the tale of Scrooge as the storyteller suddently becomes the story.
Each of Manual Cinema’s performances is done live and the cinematic production, with paper puppets expertly cast against a backlit screen that creates an almost animated effect, will take you from your living room to the troupe’s Chicago studios.
“What’s great about this is that we are not seeing an archive film of ‘A Christmas Carol;’ this is all new, made for today,” said Arizona Arts Live Executive Director Chad Herzog, who said Manual Cinema’s production is reminiscent of “the most traditional side of what cinema was (in its early stages), with paper puppets and overhead projectors.”
“All of their pieces have live music components with a live band,” he said, adding that in addition to the paper puppets and silhouettes, the performances include an actress portraying Aunt Trudy. “This is all live; nothing is computer animated.”
