Manual Cinema Updates A CHRISTMAS CAROL For Our Times
The Dueling Critics, Kerry Reid and Jonathan Abarbanel, discuss Manual Cinema’s world premiere adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
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Realizing that traditional in-person performances wouldn’t be taking place this year, Manual Cinema began adapting the Charles Dickens classic A CHRISTMAS CAROL back when it was very warm outside. Members of the performance collective created a new virtual production that they perform live every night of the current run from their Logan Square neighborhood-based studio.
In this version, the classic tale is told through a contemporary lens involving a character named Aunt Trudy, who has been recruited to channel her late husband Joe’s famous Christmas cheer. Trudy reconstructs Joe’s annual Christmas Carol puppet show over Zoom, but becomes more absorbed in her own version of the story, as the puppets take on a life of their own, and the family’s call transforms into a stunning cinematic retelling of Dickens’s classic ghost story.
A scene from Manual Cinema’s CHRISTMAS CAROL
