"The Ice Book" by Davy & Kristin McGuire

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably know I love multimedia productions in which a number of artistic disciplines come together to "perform" or present the story or art. This is my favorite kind of theater and the ability to tell stories like this is one of the things I miss most in giving up theater to pursue animation and development.

The Ice Book, created by Davy & Kristin McGuire, is a multimedia production of a different kind, almost like a human-sized pop-up book that comes to life. In presenting scenes and story this way it becomes clear how much of life really is in fairy tales, if only we choose to see it.

From the description:

The Ice Book is a miniature theatre show made of paper and light. An exquisite experience of fragile paper cutouts and video projections that sweep you right into the heart of a fantasy world. It is an intimate and immersive experience of animation, book art and performance.

It's simply beautiful. Take a look:

The Ice Book (HD) from Davy and Kristin McGuire on Vimeo.

Their website HERE has lots of information about the project and how they went about it. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Davy always had the dream of creating a theatre performance that opened up like a pop-up book. A show that would mix video projections with live actors to create a totally immersive experience. We wanted to create a full scale, life-size theatre production. 

The idea for the Icebook was to create a miniature maquette for this dream – a demonstration model to show to producers and other funders in the hope that they would give us some money to make the full scale show. (And we still hope that this will come true one day!) The Icebook has since however, grown its own legs and turned into a miniature show all by itself. An intimate performance for small audiences. 

We love the old pre-cinematic optical illusions, such as zeotropes and magic lanterns, and the magical way in which they can mesmerise audiences through basic mechanics. Rather than simply projecting images onto a screen, we wanted to create an object with a life of its own – a tangible and magical “thing” for an audience to experience. 

...Aesthetically, we were also inspired by early 20th century Russian fairytales as well as the work of Jan Svankmajer, Flatworld, the Judder Man from the Metz advert, Georges Méliès and the genre of German expressionism.

The couple spent much of last year touring with the art show to many enthusiastic and rave reviews. I hope they've had much continuing success and will produce more in this vein. For instance, I'd love to see them create their version of a fairy tale for the ongoing Re-Enchantment project or find another avenue/collaborator that can help expose their artistry to an even larger audience. 


Davy and Kristin McGuire can be followed and contacted on Twitter HERE.