School Performance: Manual Cinema: Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster (KCYS)

This performance is part of the Krannert Center Youth Series (KCYS), school-day performances for public, private, and home schools, grades PreK-12.

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! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster uses hundreds of illustrated paper puppets, book pages, two-dimensional props, furry monster puppets, and songs to bring Mo Willems’ books to life. Manual Cinema wants to recreate the experience of holding one of Mo’s book pages, which are big, bold, colorful, and full of visual rhythm, with a playful use of scale. Like all Manual Cinema productions, you’re invited to watch the big screen like a traditional movie, or to watch the artists below as they create the story in real time. (There is no wrong way to watch the show!)

Recommended for grades preK-3