Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster: On Demand

About the Show

Leonardo tries so hard to be scary. But… he just isn’t. When he searches far and wide for a friend to frighten, he discovers Sam, who is scared of anything and everything! With puppets, projections, music and a story by none other than Your Pal Mo Willems, this performance will surprise you with its cinema-sized story about fright, feelings and friendship. See how multimedia movie magic gets made when Manual Cinema presents Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster.

Puppets and projections bring Mo Willems’ tale of a bungling monster to life.

Did You Know?

1. Using hundreds of handmade paper puppets, Manual Cinema set out to capture the experience of turning the page in a Mo Willems picture book.
2. Triple threat Lily Emerson, who plays Emily, the Assistant Producer in the show, also narrates the story, sings the songs and provides all the character voices!
3. Another show based on a beloved Mo Willems book—Elephant & Piggie’s We Are In a Play!—made its Off-Broadway premiere as part of our 2016-17 season.

About the Company

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 and live feed cameras, the artists of Manual Cinema cross moviegoing with theatergoing, remaking the cinema experience with liveness, ingenuity and theatricality for the stage.

Sign Interpretation:
Sign interpretation provided by Hands On

Audio Description:
Audio description provided by VocalEyes

Inspired by the books Leonardo, The Terrible Monster and Sam, The Most Scaredy-Cat Kid in the Whole World by Mo Willems