As ArtsEmerson prepares to welcome back Manual Cinema to Boston with their show The End of TV, we decided to map out all the locations the Chicago-based company has traveled to in the past few years. Manual Cinema has made its way around the world, performing their shows from the oceanfront theater at UC Santa Barbara, California to the deserts of Cairo, Egypt. Take a look at the locations Manual Cinema has traveled to with…

To tell a tale of social dislocation facilitated by mass media, Manual Cinema set its latest multimedia performance in the recent past. The protagonist of “The End of TV” is isolated from real-life contact and mesmerized by technology, circa the early 1990s. It’s the lure of the television shopping network QVC that ensnares her. That obsession may almost seem quaint today, when most of us carry around a little computer that can function as an…

At 6:00 am, the Somerville kitchen for Greater Boston Chinese Golden Age Center begins preparing the 3,000 daily meals for the elderly all across the Boston metro area. By 9:00 am, the vans are packed full of coolers with several hundred meals each and depart on one of the 14 routes serving Quincy, Brighton, downtown Boston and beyond. By 1:00 pm, all 3,000 meals have been served and the vans return to Somerville to be…

Next month, ArtsEmerson welcomes back Manual Cinema with The End of TV, as we witness a friendship unfold between two women. Flo, an elderly woman suffering from the onset of dementia, and Louise, a younger African-American woman recovering from economic hardship, have seemingly different life experiences. Despite their differences, both women worked at the same local factory; Flo, during World War II, and Louise, just recently laid off. This connection prompted us to look into…

Set in the late 90s against the backdrop of constant channel switching, The End of TV (JAN 16 – 27) recreates a handful of iconic QVC moments and shows from the decade. By using live-video feeds, green screen and a flurry of costume changes and props, the company of Manual Cinema literally re-produces the TV spots in front of audiences, projecting the final product on a screen hanging above the action. With nearly a frame by frame…

Manual Cinema’s The End of TV continues to entrance audiences with live video feeds, shadow puppetry using overhead projectors and original music to tell the story of unlikely friendship amid the static during the late 1990s. Peter Sagal, from NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me tweeted this week, “I saw my first play at age 8. I’ve seen work by Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Richard Foreman, Reza Abdoh, Wooster Group, and more. I’ve never seen anything as delightfully…

Manual Cinema’s The End of TV explores the unexpected friendship between two women–one an elderly white woman who is obsessed with television home shopping and the other a young black woman who delivers for Meals on Wheels–both living in a declining Midwestern city during the late 1990s. This stunning performance juxtaposes the bleak setting of the rust belt with the loud vibrancy of TV home shopping programs and commercials. The End of TV opens this…

It has been almost a year since Chicago-based theatre troupe Manual Cinema stunned Boston with their magical performance of Ada/Ava. This multimedia masterpiece, which showcased Manual Cinema’s unique use of shadow puppetry, live-action silhouettes and overhead projections, ran for a brief yet sold out weekend in January 2018. Audiences were “blown-away” by Manual Cinema’s ability to “create a new art form” and raved about the beauty and poignancy of the show. WBUR remarked, “In the…