Jason Lutes - "Berlin" - Dr. Evan H. Carver
Join comics creator Jason Lutes in conversation with scholar Dr. Evan H. Carver as they discuss Lutes’s expansive work, Berlin – the source text for Court Theatre’s world premiere production. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.
At the Co-op
This event is presented in partnership with Court Theatre to help celebrate the world premier of Berlin taking place April 19th-May 11th. More information on the stage play can be found here.
About the Book: Jason Lutes’s Berlin is an intricate look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens – Marthe Müller, a young woman escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War I; Kurt Severing, an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold; the Brauns, a family torn apart by poverty and politics. Lutes weaves these characters’ lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart.
The city itself is the central protagonist in this historical fiction. Lavish salons, crumbling sidewalks, dusty attics, and train stations: all these places come alive in Lutes’s masterful hand. Weimar Berlin was the world’s metropolis, where intellectualism, creativity, and sensuous liberal values thrived, and Lutes maps its tragic, inevitable decline. Devastatingly relevant and beautifully told, Berlin is one of the great epics of the comics medium.
About the Author: JASON LUTES graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration in 1991. He wrote and drew the graphic novel Berlin over the course of 22 years. Lutes currently lives in Vermont, where he teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies and designs role-playing games while working on his next graphic novel.
About the Interlocutor: Dr. Evan H. Carver is an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at the University of Chicago, where he specializes in community design, sustainability, and urban environmental equity. His research explores the intersection of urban space, environmental stewardship, and community engagement, with particular emphasis in subcultural urbanism and activism. He directs the University's Berlin study abroad program focusing on conflict, community, and sustainability, and founded Expositions, an innovative student-run magazine highlighting undergraduate work in environmental and urban studies. He holds degrees in urban planning from the University of Washington and the University of Colorado - Denver, as well as a degree in Germanics from Carleton College.
Find more information here.
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The magic in Berlin is in the way Lutes conjures, out of old newspapers and photographs, a city so remote from him in time and space... [...