A multimedia collaboration with the inventive light and shadow company Manual Cinema telling Mary Shelley's Frankenstein story on a percussion-filled stage.

Frankenstein was commissioned by the University of Chicago's Court Theater and premiered in a month-long run followed by a sold-out NYC debut for two-weeks at Public Theater and a month-long run at the 850-seat McEwan Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland.

"The Chicago-based company Manual Cinema adaptation of 'Frankenstein'... is endlessly imaginative and exquisitely beautiful." - The New Yorker

"The jam-packed but meticulously organized stage is outfitted with an elaborate percussion installation... you immediately sense that something completely out of the ordinary is about to unfold... The miracle in all this is that the emotional power of the work never gets lost in the mind-bogglingly intricate clockwork mechanism that drives it. Quite a feat of creation on every front." - WTTW - Chicago PBS

"Bringing life to inanimate matter is a delicate and dangerous business, and its consequences have been known to be both appalling and delightful. At the Under the Radar Festival, the arts collective Manual Cinema is taking care of both ends of that spectrum." - The New York Times

"'Frankenstein' left its audience breathless with the complex beauty of its storytelling and the talent of its cast." - Yale Daily News

"Usually on stage, performances have to choose: They can be daring and innovative, or they can land a sucker-punch to the soul. They can be tender and delicate, or they can wow with startling wizardry. They can be rooted in theater’s oldest traditions, with actors alone on a darkened stage before an audience, or they can break the form apart. Manual Cinema, a five person performance troupe out of Chicago, somehow manages to do all of it at once." - The Daily Beast

"You'll likely to be blown away by the singularity of the artistic technique... Manual Cinema does world-class work from its Chicago base; the word is only now getting out." - Chicago Tribune

"With a score that sonically stitches the story together, Frankenstein is an ingenious merger of live music and captivating visuals... Easily recognizable instruments fill the stage alongside contraptions that defy definition – whirligigs with spinning mirrors, percussion/string mashups, bizarre gadgets that thrum and hum... Sometimes, it's more like roaring waves, a force-field of sound sweeping up everything in its orbit." - The Chicago Sun-Times

"Manual Cinema's Frankenstein is most definitely worth the superlatives ... It's a marvel of timing, artistry and performance ... It's impossible not to be enthralled. This is glorious, opulent theatre and is a piece rightly being lauded across both the city and Festival." Five Stars, British Theatre Guide

"This represents the highest standard of artistic performance and innovation in theatrical arts... Manual Cinema is the definition of originality... A truly five star production." The Edinburgh Fringe

"I saw my first play at age 8... I've never seen anything as delightfully unique, and at the same time accessible, as Manual Cinema." - Peter Sagal of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

"Brilliant, thrilling, heartfelt production with jaw dropping ingenuity. Easily one of the most inventive things I've ever watched. An absolute must see." - Neil Patrick Harris


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© 2019 by Peter Ferry