A few years ago, an Australian impresario named Jordan Verzar put together the Graphic Festival at the Sydney Opera House which included a dream list of multi-media comics projects, including the Neil Gaiman/Eddie Campbell/Fourplay String Quartet collaboration The Truth is a Cave in a Black Mountain and the Art Spiegelman/Phillip Johnston Sextet collaboration Wordless. I was lucky enough to see both of these when the came to the US earlier this year, and I’m happy to say that Wordless is touring the country, and may just come to a city near you. If it does, run run to see it!
“Wordless” is, ironically, not wordless at all, but Spiegelman narrating a history of the early, silent woodcut graphic novels of the first half of the 2oth century, works by artists like Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, Milt Gross, Otto Nuckel, and Si Lewen. The projected comics are accompanied by improvised jazz styling by the Phillip Johnston Sextet, and the evening is full of information, music and the magic of art and storytelling. You can read more about it on a tumblr Spiegelman has set up, (Spiegelman tumbles, says the headline) and here’s an article from SFGate with more thoughts on the venture. And here are the dates:
Tour Details
Wednesday, October 8
Cleveland OH — Oberlin College
Friday, October 10
UC Berkeley, CA — Zellerbach Auditorium
Sunday, October 12
Seattle, WA — Seattle Theatre Group, Moore Theater
Wednesday, October 15
Los Angeles, CA — UCLA, Royce Hall
Friday, October 17
Santa Barbara, CA — UCSB, Arts & Lectures
Sunday, October 19
Kansas City, MO — Kauffman Center
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Washington, DC — GWU Lisner Auditorium
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Boston, MA — The Institute of Contemporary Art
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