If you’re over a certain age, you may remember a curious contraption used in education called an overhead projector. These neat little devices allowed teachers to write on a plastic sheet with a special marker. A light source was projected upward through the plastic onto a mirror, which then projected the image through a lens onto a larger size at the front of the classroom. With the advent of computer projection systems and interactive whiteboards (not to mention laptops/iPads in the schools and later online learning), overhead projectors declined in use beginning in the 2000s, with schools and businesses getting rid of the machines for other higher tech options.
The shift turned out to be a boon for shadow puppetry artists. Because the overhead projector is taking a small space and projecting it onto a large one, the device makes manipulating shadow puppets a lot less unwieldy than traditional shadow puppetry, performed behind a screen with the light source behind it. With overhead projectors, a puppeteer can quickly shift from one puppet to the next, and make dramatic scenery shifts in a moment.
“They’re these fascinating obsolete pieces of technology,” says Drew Dir, co-founder and co-artistic director of Manual Cinema., a puppetry company based out of Chicago. They specialize in cinematic approaches to puppet theater— using handmade puppets and actors in silhouette.
Manual Cinema was founded in 2010, during a time when schools were getting rid of their overhead projectors. “We just kind of got really caught up in like, how can we use these things for storytelling?” Dir says. “How far can we push them? We just got really into the creative endeavor of how complex can we get.”
At first, the project was more of a glorified hobby than a job. “We kind of said, well, we find this really cool. We trust that whoever comes to see these shows will also maybe think it’s cool. And so far, that’s like served as well for the last 15 years.” The company has toured their work internationally, earning high praise from critics. In 2017, they won an Emmy for a video they made produced by from the New York Times.
Of course, overhead projectors are a bit harder to come by these days. The company has about two or three dozen of them in stock. “It’s a whole museum of the overhead projectors,” Dir says.
The company is bringing its production of “Ada/Ava” to Northrop this Thursday. The original story of “Ada/Ava” was developed over many years, Dir tells me. Partly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” it’s also inspired by Dir’s personal story.
“When my grandmother passed away, I observed my grandfather grieving her, and also figuring out how to go through life as one person instead of two people because they’d been married for so long,” Dir says.
The piece uses 400 separate shadow puppets and slides, and actors wearing silhouette masks, to create the illusion of identical twin sisters.
“Ada/Ava,” is a play with no spoken text or dialogue. Instead, it’s told entirely through music, much like a silent film. In its earliest presentations, the company accompanied the story with cello, guitar, clarinet, and vocals. A few years ago, they partnered with a venue in Philadelphia to create a version accompanied by pipe organ. For the presentation at Northrop, organist Aaron David Miller performs with the group on Northrop’s Aeolian-Skinner.
Often, Manual Cinema will use many different puppet versions of the same character throughout the production. That allows for different kinds of cinematic shots— like close-ups, medium shots, or wide shots, and it also allows each puppet to perform a specific task for each scene. For example, they may need one character to walk in one scene, for another scene it just needs to move its hand— so they have two different puppets for those two scenes.
“It’s different from other forms of puppetry,” Dir says. “If you’re making a marionette, you want that puppet to be able to express a whole spectrum of emotions and be able to do a range of different kinds of actions. All of our puppets are sort of designed to do just one action because they’re on screen for a couple of seconds.”
“Ada/Ava” performs Thursday, February 29 at 7 p.m. at Northrop ($22). More information here.
Sheila Regan
Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.
