WORD!
The sun was shining, fans of the written word were laughing and comparing notes on their favourite authors, exotic meats and vegetables were grilling... it was definitely a great Sunday to be at Word on the Street.
And so the Kill Shakespeare team braved this paradise (though we somehow forgot to grab any Tiny Tom donuts -- for shame, what we're we thinking?) to do our second presentation at WOTS - which is a huge honour for us. We love getting the chance to mingle with so many readers and we especially appreciate the chance to try to open people's eyes to the humble comic book.In fact for next year I'm hoping to convince WOTS to give us and a few other creators a panel with some sort of provocative title ("You're dumb if you're not reading comics" ?) in order to really shake up the notion that comics are for kids.But that's enough of my little sideline passion.This post is really about thanking Nicola at WOTS for organizing the event and getting the K.S. boys a panel. And it is about thanking the people who came to hear us speak (standing room only!), and it is about appreciating the passion and energy the entire festival brought to the day. For those of you have not been to a WOTS it is getting bigger and bigger all the time, and the one in Toronto was easily the busiest I'd ever seen. And you don't even have to be in Toronto to enjoy the fun. The Toronto WOTS is held in conjunction with events across the country, including one in Halifax where our dear friend Chris Benjamin was a guest of honour.
It's a great venue for hearing readings, picking up cool books, getting discounted magazine subscriptions (as my fiancee may have done) and mingling. It's also a great venue for kids so we invite all our fans to come down next year to join the party at Queen's Park - and come support the "comics are literature too" movement we'll be trying to drum up.As for the panel itself? Well, first off, we were scheduled to present at the "This is Not the Shakespeare Stage" -- perhaps the greatest literary omen since the 'Ides of March' (although I think our day worked out a LITTLE better than Caesar's). Once we got there we were greeted by a large and enthusiastic crowd and received a wonderful intro from the festival organizers.Then Anthony and I spent an hour going through the "ins and outs" of writing and drawing comics (poor Andy was in NYC and couldn't join us) and providing tips about how to become a creative entrepreneur. As I mentioned above the crowd was fantastic, especially Scott who graciously volunteered to be a guinea pig and talk through a comic book he was working on that had stalled.
We also found time to plug the excellent Kate Beaton and her work Hark, A Vagrant!, to do a little high-fashion runway modelling, and to be COMPLETELY charmed by two adorable moppets in the front row who answered more questions than all the adults in the tent combined.At the end there was nothing left to do but treat the crowd to a brief sneak-preview of "Kill Shakespeare: The Musical" (starring the Bear from 'A Winter's Tale', naturally). We were told it was the first time that someone had ended a WOTS presentation with a soft-shoe routine.We hope that all of you who attended ended up gaining some value from our presentation, and please we'd love to hear feedback so that we can continue to improve our talks. We'd be honoured if something we said or did inspired your own creative spirits.All the best, and thanks again Toronto for the best Word on the Street yet!A smattering of the many photos the lovely Crystal Luxmore, the aforementioned fiancee, took of the day are below.
- Anthony preparing to launch into "Kill Shakespeare: The Musical"
