Manual Cinema: The 4th Witch
special performance for schools and educatorsA whimsical and imaginative inversion of 'Macbeth' comes to life through inventive shadow puppetry.
The 4th Witch is a fantastic new story, inspired by Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which a girl escapes war and flees into a dark forest. Told through shadow puppetry, actors in silhouette and live music (without dialogue or narration), The 4th Witch begins on the eve of an invasion of a small town by the local warlord, Macbeth. The girl flees the invading army and escapes into the nearby forest. Orphaned and exiled, she is rescued by a witch, who adopts her as an apprentice. As she becomes more skilled in witchcraft, her grief and rage draw her into a nightmarish quest for vengeance against the warlord who killed her parents: Macbeth.
Educational connections include topics of history, English language arts and theater.
Recommended for 7th-12th grade students.
There are loud sounds and flashing lights.
The 4th Witch premiered June 4-8, 2025, at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC and was co-commissioned by Spoleto Festival, CalPerformances, Arts Emerson and Wisconsin Union Theater.
photo by Katie Doyle
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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. Manual Cinema combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen.
Using vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design and live music, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity and theatricality. The company was awarded an Emmy in 2017 for The Forger, a video created for The New York Times and named Chicago Artists of the Year in 2018 by the Chicago Tribune. Their shadow puppet animations were featured in the 2021 film remake of Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions. Recent productions include Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, based on books by Mo Willems, an adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and a revamped production of The Magic City, based on Edith Nesbit's 1910 novel. In 2023, Manual Cinema completed production on their first self-produced short film, Future Feeling, and toured with folk rock band Iron & Wine the following year. Manual Cinema's newest production, The 4th Witch, is an inversion of Shakespeare's Macbeth and is now touring nationally.
“Charming, funny, life-affirming”
The New York Times
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