In this performative talk, go behind the scenes with Manual Cinema Co-Artistic Director Sarah Fornace. Since its founding in 2010, Chicago-based Manual Cinema has cultivated a distinct approach to performance that merges handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen. Tonight, dive into their process and find out how they craft their unique form of live cinema. You’ll discover the surprising ways that familiar materials (including your own body!) can be used to transformative effect.

Manual Cinema is a performance collective, design studio, and film/video production company founded by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter. 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.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.