By Roxanne Bielskis

Trampoline Hall, the lecture series/literary salon with a reputation for being playful and inventive, is upping its quirk factor slightly this week in two ways.
Instead of being held at its usual venue, Sneaky Dee’s, this week’s lectures (on robotism, hyperbolic crochet and diverse curiosity) will be delivered at Fort York. The event’s organizers have also found an experimental new way to capture the evening’s events: a group of Toronto-based comics artists will act as stenographers.
Here is something Misha Glouberman, the host of the show, said about a manifesto for comics stenographers:
“There is no manifesto for the comic artists. The one thing I’d encourage is – I’d love it if whatever work they do looks at the whole environment – arriving at the show, the space, and, especially, the audience, rather than just focusing on what is done on stage. But that’s just a suggestion. Mostly, they should just do whatever they want.”
Sean Craig, who is organizing the comics artists, had this to say about the experiment:
“Moved by the old American fable that recounts Francis Scott Key’s inspiration to write the Star Spangled banner as he witnessed the bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, we’ve decided to drag a ragtag team of Toronto’s best comics artists to Fort York and have them document the city’s most famous literary salon and lecture series, Trampoline Hall, with their medium.”
Artists who’ve signed on to attempt this feat include Torontoist’s own Roxanne Bielskis (that’s me!), Arthur de la Cruz, Shannon Gerard, Emily Holton, Stuart and Katherine Immonen, Eric Kim, Blair Kitchen, Jeff Lemire, Steve Manale, Kagan McLeod, Ramon Perez, Ben Shannon, Fiona Smyth, Diana Tamblyn, Zach Worton, Reverend Aitor, and maybe more.
Though tickets for tonight’s event are sold out, the resulting comics will be availble in a few formats. The show’s curator, Becky Johnson, will be compiling them into a zine that will be available at Canzine (Sunday, October 28th, at the Gladstone Hotel). There will also be an effort made to publish the comics in Maisonneuve magazine, though at this time there are no publication dates available.
Photo by james at middleage from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.