Ben Kauffman is a Chicago-based composer, sound designer and director. He is the co-founder and and co-Artistic Director of Manual Cinema, an acclaimed interdisciplinary theater and film company formed in 2010. His work on the New York Times documentary The Forger (2016) was recognized with two News and Documentary Emmys for Music and Sound Design, and he along with his Manual Cinema co-Artistic Directors was named Chicagoan of the Year in 2018.
His music and sound design for theater and film has been commissioned by the likes of the New York Times, AMC, NPR’s Invisibilia, Court Theatre, and StoryCorps among others. His theater work has been performed worldwide at venues like The Kennedy Center (DC), Davies Symphony Hall (SF), The Under the Radar Festival (NYC), The Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), The Tehran International Puppetry Festival (Iran), The Noorderzon Festival (Netherlands), the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), The Metropolitan Museum (NYC) and elsewhere around the world.The End of TV, a multimedia song-cycle he co-composed for Manual Cinema was a recipient of The New England Foundation for the Arts National Theater Project award.
His film and interactive work has been shown at The Art Institute of Chicago, the Nantucket Film Festival, the American Fringe Festival in Paris, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago), the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (Chicago), the University of Wisconsin, and CUNY’s Baruch College (NYC). He received his A.B in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, and his M.P.S. from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts in Interactive Media.