New Victory Theater

The Chicago collective Manual Cinema (Ada/Ava) combines live actors and musicians with puppetry, overhead projectors and filmic techniques to create virtuosically handmade theater experiences. The company visited the New Vic in 2022 with Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, which was aimed at very young kids. This time, it aims a little older with a reprise of its first show for family audiences: its 2017 adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s 1910 novel about a girl who finds herself trapped inside the miniature metropolis she has been building out of household objects to avoid the annoyances of real life. 

Zip Zap Circus visits the New Vic with a distinctively South African show that infuses circus arts (such as aerialism, Cyr wheel and juggling) and local dance forms (such as gumboot and pantsula) with the generous communitarian spirit known in Bantu cultures as ubuntu. Founded in 1992, the troupe draws performers from its youth and outreach programs in the Cape Town area. Families can participate in free lobby activities for 45 minutes before every show and 20 minutes after.