{"id":528,"date":"2026-03-20T06:04:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T06:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/?page_id=528"},"modified":"2026-03-22T04:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T04:06:07","slug":"http-palette-ecuad-ca-justinnovak-wp-content-uploads-sites-90-2026-03-learstorm-cover-art-for-instagram-jpg","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/http-palette-ecuad-ca-justinnovak-wp-content-uploads-sites-90-2026-03-learstorm-cover-art-for-instagram-jpg\/","title":{"rendered":"Learstorm"},"content":{"rendered":"

A graphic narrative and intermedia project, adapted from Shakespeare’s King Lear<\/em>, in collaboration with Leon Johnson and Lodger<\/em>, Newburgh, New York.<\/p>\n

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Learstorm<\/em>, dinner and reading at Lodger<\/em> in Newburgh, NY, on the occasion of the release of a prospectus edition by Lodger Press<\/em> in June 2024<\/div>\n
(pictured on left: Leon Johnson \/ photo credit: Brian Armoured)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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LEARSTORM<\/em> is a radically streamlined version of the King Lear<\/em> text that largely flattens the narrative arc, jettisoning virtually all of the family melodrama and royal court intrigue that occupy its pages. In place of the abandoned content, a mashup of text poached from the playwright\u2019s other classic works highlights the violence of the storm as a necessary cathartic reckoning and revelatory force.\u00a0 This thread travels through a great number of Shakespeare’s plays, literally or metaphorically, and voices from a dozen of his works are channeled and woven together in Learstorm to harness, amplify and deepen the poetic resonance of the playwright\u2019s insight, and its remarkable contemporary relevance.<\/div>\n
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The LEARSTORM<\/em> project is rooted in an ongoing inquiry into a striking contemporary resonance to be found in the text of Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear<\/em>. This ongoing intermedia exploration that has combined performance, communal dining and tableware design, but revolves principally around a graphic narrative that will take the form of neither comic book nor theatrical script, but perhaps a hybrid of the two. In short, Shakespeare\u2019s original King Lear concerns a patriarch who rages against his perceived victimhood, after relinquishing a lifelong stranglehold on power to female heirs once they bring to an end both the monarch\u2019s entitlements and their prior deference to him. At the play\u2019s heart, however, is the protagonist\u2019s full reckoning with his own cancerous past behaviour, brought on by an earthshaking storm.\u00a0 Striking parallels can be found not only in the current rise of authoritarianism (and the surging misogynism and white rage that has accompanied it), but in the unfolding horror of climate crisis.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A graphic narrative and intermedia project, adapted from Shakespeare’s King Lear, in collaboration with Leon Johnson and Lodger, Newburgh, New York. Learstorm, dinner and reading at Lodger in Newburgh, NY, on the occasion of the release of a prospectus edition by Lodger Press in June 2024 (pictured on left: Leon Johnson \/ photo credit: Brian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-528","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":588,"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/528\/revisions\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.ecuad.ca\/justinnovak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}