Something very wonderful is on stage at the Studebaker Theater this pre-Halloween weekend. A haunting affair, one part horror and another strange beauty, the Chicago-based Emmy-award-winning performance collective Manual Cinema […]

Puppets have stories to tell. And they tell them in all sorts of fanciful and humanistic ways. The 6th annual Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has come to an end […]

It was a rainy Sunday morning, so what’s the best thing to do (as an alternative to staying in bed)? About a hundred parents and kids—and I—thought the best thing […]

Manual Cinema’s 10th Anniversary Retrospectacular, launched this week, will bring back four of the company’s most inventive shows from the past 10 years. The four productions will be shown on […]

This isn’t a “best theater of 2018” list. We didn’t see everything. Most of our writers are freelancers, all with other gigs, and it’s hard for us to cover the […]

Manual Cinema is presenting a weirdly enchanting version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at Court Theatre. Nine puppeteers and musicians display the original story of Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature, combined with […]

Every once in a while you get to see a work of theater that seems as if it could reinvent the form. Manual Cinema is a Chicago-based company that has […]

This goddamn partisan turmoil just won’t stop, will it? Unless you have set yourself firmly against all forms of consuming the news, you heard that President Obama nominated Merrick Garland […]