SUNY Oswego’s ARTSwego Performing Arts Series was able to bring Manual Cinema’s “The 4th Witch” to the Oswego community.
Inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” “The 4th Witch” tells the story of a young girl who becomes an apprentice to a witch after being orphaned by the young warlord Macbeth. The show combines shadow puppetry with small cutout puppets placed on overhead projectors to weave a unique and inspired take on a classic story.
Manual Cinema is an Emmy Award-winning performance collective, design studio and film/video production company. Founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller and Kyle Vegter, the group masterfully combines its puppetry with various cinematic techniques and vibrant live sound to create stories. The group originally performed the show at the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival in January.
Within the first few minutes of “The 4th Witch,” the audience is not really sure what to expect. Lulled into a false sense of comfort, the show quickly switches to an unexpected dark tone that stays with the audience and refuses to let go. Its beautifully haunting melody, created by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter and performed live by musicians Lucy Little, Lia Kohl and Alicia Water, brings a sense of unease you cannot wait to feel again and again. When the show ended with a standing ovation, you could feel this was something special.
Sarah Fornace is one of Manual Cinema’s co-artistic directors. She also plays the role of the young girl. She describes creating the shows as similar to making a movie first and then a play. The team starts by creating a storyboard. The Manual Cinema then animate it and scan it to see how long each shot is. They then send it to composers who create music based on the animatic. The group gets together to create choreography and collaborate with the musician to perfect the timing.
“We always wanted to make manual cinema, so we always want it to feel like a handmade film in front of you,” Fornace said.
In terms of size and scale, “The 4th Witch” uses over 800 different shadow puppets. Fornace said it’s Manual Cinema’s “newest and fastest” show.
What makes Manual Cinemas shows so unique is a notable absence of spoken dialogue. The music truly goes hand in hand with the visuals to create a transcendent experience. Fornace said that creating and performing a show like this takes focus.
“You have to be a film editor, a dancer, a performer and everything all at once,” Fornace said. “One benefit of the show having no dialogue is that it can be a worldwide experience. “It allows us to take them all over the world because there isn’t a language barrier.”
Fornace said the hardest part of performing a show like this is the storytelling. Without any dialogue or distinct faces, it can be difficult for the audience to follow along with the story. Manual Cinema has overcome this hurdle tenfold by having incredible sound design that guides the audience through the story without revealing too much.
“You have to put yourselves into it, and so we want to reward that by taking us on a journey together,” Fornace said.
In bringing the show to universities like SUNY Oswego, Fornace hopes that seeing similar shows will inspire young people to create similar projects and take similar risks.
If you are looking to experience something refreshingly original and truly unique, follow along with Manual Cinema’s current and future projects. The ARTSwego Performing Arts Series also has more creative experiences coming soon.
