The Soraya In Your Home!: Manual Cinema's Christmas Carol

Bring the arts and holiday spirit into your home with help from The Soraya! You can stream Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol this December 11th through December 13th! Read on for more details and show times.

This is a hosted event. The Soraya has provided us a ticket in exchange for this post. However, all opinions are honest and my own. This post contains Amazon Affiliate Links. A SoCal Way of Life earns a commission from purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

The Soraya brings the arts to you!

The Soraya brings the arts and live performance to locals in it’s beautiful theater located in the California State University, Northridge campus. Due to the pandemic, The Soraya has had to close it’s doors until further notice. However, you can now stream live shows directly into your home!

My family has been to the Soraya in recent years and their performances always leave my family in awe. In fact, my youngest keeps asking when The Soraya will be opening again. Our very last show was Ballet BC’s Romeo and Juliet and it made a lasting impression on both girls.

Holiday magic with Manual Cinemas

Manual Cinemas is an Emmy Award-winning, interdisciplinary performance collective. The collective is returning to The Soraya with an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol that is both visually and musically inventive. But don’t take my word for it, check out this video!

The show will include hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures, silhouettes, an an original live score. The Soraya states, “The story is told by Aunt Trudy, an avowed holiday skeptic. On Christmas Eve, during quarantine, she has been recruited to entertain her family with a puppet show on a Zoom call. The puppets soon take on a life of their own, and the family’s call transforms into a stunning cinematic adaptation of the classic ghost story.”

A family member putting on a holiday performance during a Zoom call? How appropriate is this for 2020?! I think the family will get a kick out of this holiday adaptation.

Who is Manual Cinemas?

Manual Cinemas is a performance collective that “combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music to create immersive stories for stage and screen.” Manual Cinemas brings magic into its story-telling by using “vintage overhead projectors, multiple screens, puppets, actors, live feed cameras, multi-channel sound design, and a live music ensemble.”

Manual Cinema was named Chicago Artists of the Year in 2018 by the Chicago Tribune.

Ticket and Show Details

There will only be six performances broadcast directly into audiences’ homes starting December 11th through December 13th. Per The Soraya, “Each show of Christmas Carol will be performed live in Manual Cinema’s Chicago studio in a socially distanced manner and will be live-streamed to audiences of The Soraya via MarqueeTV. The program will not be available for later viewing.”

Where to Purchase Tickets:

https://www.thesoraya.org/calendar/details/christmas-carol

Ticket Price:

Access Pass is $20 to Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, which gives access to a max of 10 people in a family.

Performance Dates:

Friday, December 11 at 5PM & 7PM
Saturday, December 12 at 1PM & 5PM
Sunday, December 13 at 1PM & 4PM *A backstage tour is available on Sunday following the 4pm performance with the Soraya Membership.* Memberships begin at $120 and are available at https://www.thesoraya.org/support/membership/