Featured Artists

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.

In Summer 2025, Manual Cinema premiered their latest feature production, The 4th Witch—a bold and imaginative inversion of Macbeth that is now touring.

Clear-eyed and tough-minded, songwriter/playwright Katie Dahl is known for her smart songs, wry wit, and wise spirit. A small-town celebrity on the Wisconsin peninsula where her family has lived for 175 years, Katie is also an internationally touring, radio-charting artist who “delivers razor-sharp lyrics with a hearty, soulful voice” (American Songwriter). In live shows that are both courageously honest and devilishly funny, Katie dives deep into questions of land and love, family and body image, grief and joy. “In unsettled times,” says Peter Mulvey, “Katie Dahl brings us a grounded spirit.”

Jennifer Vosters (she/her) is a writer and theatremaker originally from Wisconsin, now based in Chicago. Her original play, Songs Without Words (or, The Mendelssohn Play), won the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award from the American Theatre Critics Association in 2024. Wisconsin acting credits include American Players Theatre, Forward Theater Company, Children’s Theater of Madison, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, Next Act Theatre, and others. Regional credits include Writers Theatre, Shakespeare Project of Chicago, Lyric Repertory Company, and the Utah, Notre Dame, and Flagstaff Shakespeare Festivals. She is a proud member of AEA and the Dramatists Guild.

Sophie Minouche Allen is a Chicago-based dance artist who imbues playfulness and nuance in all her endeavors. She performs, choreographs, teaches, and collaborates throughout the city and beyond. In addition to her independent projects, Sophie has had the pleasure of performing with Bob Eisen, Camila Rivero Pooley/INSÉKTA, Helen Lee/Momentum Sensorium, The Seldoms, Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape, Nora Sharp, Niko8, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre, The Human Experience Dance Project, and many others. Her choreography has been commissioned and/or presented by Symbiosis Arts/SANCTA 2026, CPR Dance: Inhale Movement, 3AM Theatre, Color Club, The College of DuPage, bim bom studios for TIN CAN 2026 and 2024, FACT/SF for their Winter Dance Lab 2026 and Summer Dance Festival 2024, Thodos Dance Chicago/DanceWorks Chicago for New Dances 2024, Bodies of Water, Midwest RADFest, Detroit Dance Exchange, Side Street Studio Arts/Going Dutch Festival, and COMMON conservatory among others. Sophie is on faculty at The Grainger Academy of The Joffrey Ballet, guest teaches for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and offers open classes throughout the city. She also has had the pleasure of teaching with FACT/SF for their Winter Dance Lab 2026 and Summer Dance Festival 2024, DanceWorks Chicago for Dance360, The University of Chicago, The Rooted Space, Chicago Movement Collective, Visceral Dance Center, DISCO RIOT, and many others. Sophie holds a BFA in Dance and BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from the University of Michigan, and is a certified Countertechnique® Teacher. www.sophieminouche.com