Manual Cinema — Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster — Inspired by the books of Mo Willems

Leonardo is a terrible monster. He tries so hard to be scary, but he just… isn’t. Then Leonardo finds Sam, the most scaredy-cat kid in the world. Will Leonardo finally get to scare the tuna salad out of someone? Or will it be the start of an unlikely friendship? The plot thickens when this pair meets Kerry and Frankenthaler, an even scaredier-cat and her monster friend. Kerry and Sam need to make a big decision: will they just be scaredy cats or can they become friends?

Leonardo! brings Mo Willems’ books to life through hundreds of illustrated puppets, hilarious actors on live cameras, fuzzy Muppet-style puppets, and a live soundtrack that both kids and their parents will love. The result is a “live movie” made onstage in front of the audience’s eyes and projected on a screen shaped like a giant picture book page. The production is designed for audience members to enjoy whether or not they have read the books, but there are easter eggs hidden throughout the show to delight fans of Mo Willems!

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 a live music ensemble, Manual Cinema transforms the experience of attending the cinema and imbues it with liveness, ingenuity, and theatricality.

Runtime: 45 minutes
Recommended for ages 4-8.