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Saturday, October 7, 201 7, 8pm Zellerbach Hall Matt Groening and Lynda Barry Love, Hate & Comics—The Friendship That Would Not Die
Cal Performances’ 2017 –18 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Matt Groening , creator and executive producer Simpsons , Futurama, and Life in Hell . Groening of the Emmy Award-winning series The Simp - has launched The Simpsons Store app and the sons , made television history by bringing Futuramaworld app; both feature online comics animation back to prime time and creating an and books. immortal nuclear family. The Simpsons is now The multitude of awards bestowed on Matt the longest-running scripted series in television Groening’s creations include Emmys, Annies, history and was voted “Best Show of the 20th the prestigious Peabody Award, and the Rueben Century” by Time Magazine. Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, Groening also served as producer and writer the highest honor presented by the National during the four-year creation process of the hit Cartoonists Society. feature film The Simpsons Movie , released in Netflix has announced Groening’s new series, 2007. In 2009 a series of Simpsons US postage Disenchantment . stamps personally designed by Groening was released nationwide. Currently, the television se - Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoon - ries is celebrating its 30th anniversary and is in ist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, com - production on the 30th season, where Groening mentator, and teacher, and found they are very continues to serve as executive producer. much alike. The New York Times has described Originally brought to life in 1987 for short an - Barry as “among this country’s greatest conjoin - imated interstitials on The Tracey Ullman Show, ers of words and images, known for plumbing The Simpsons was Groening’s introduction into all kinds of touchy subjects in cartoons, comic the long-form animation world. He was previ - strips, and novels, both graphic and illus - ously best known for his Life In Hell cartoon trated.” She earned a degree from Evergreen strip, which was syndicated in more than 250 State College during its early experimental pe - weekly newspapers for more than 30 years, and riod (1974 –78), studying with painter and writ - the books, calendars, and merchandise based on ing teacher Marilyn Frasca. Frasca’s questions Groening’s irreverent portrayal of love, work, about the nature of images and the role they play school, life, and relationships. in day-to-day living have guided Barry’s work Groening’s other Emmy-winning creation, ever since. Futurama , was launched in 1999 and ran for In 1979, while pursuing a career as a painter, seven seasons. This included four direct-to- Barry began drawing a weekly comic strip in - DVD full-length original feature releases: Ben - corporating stories considered to be incompat - der’s Big Score, The Beast With A Billion Backs, ible with comics at the time—stories, as Barry Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder. puts it, “that had a lot of trouble in them.” Widely Futurama enjoyed great success with new credited with expanding the literary, thematic, episodes on Cartoon Network and then on and emotional range of American comics, Comedy Central and continues in widespread Barry’s seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook’s Comeek , syndication. In 2016 –17 Groening’s Curiosity ran in alternative newspapers across North Company, in partnership with FoxNext Games, America for 30 years. launched a series of Futurama mobile games; the Barry has authored 21 books, worked as a most recent is “ Futurama Worlds of Tomorrow.” commentator for NPR, and had a regular In 1993 Groening formed Bongo Comics monthly feature in Esquire , Mother Jones Maga - Group, for which he serves as publisher of more zine, Mademoiselle , and Salon . She created an than 500 domestic and internationally licensed album-length spoken word collection of stories comic books, trade paperbacks, and trade books, called The Lynda Barry Experience and was a in both print and digital form, along with a host frequent guest on the Late Show with David of yearly Life in Hell, Simpsons, and Futurama Letterman . She adapted her first novel, The calendars. To date there are more than 15 mil - Good Times are Killing Me , into a long-running lion of Groening’s publications based on The off-Broadway play, since published by Samuel
PLAYBILL ABOUT THE ARTISTS
French and performed throughout North writing workshops for the public, and hosted a America. Her book One! Hundred! Demons! was “Seeing-Eye”-themed series of popular public chosen as the Freshman all-read title at Stanford talks with guests including Ryan Knighton, University. Her novel Cruddy was called “a work blind writer and writing teacher; Ivan Brunetti of terrible beauty” by the New York Times , and and Chris Ware, legendary contemporary car - has been translated into French, Italian, Ger - toonists; Matt Groening, creator of The Simp - man, Catalan, and Hebrew. sons ; and Dan Chaon, acclaimed novelist and Barry’s “Writing the Unthinkable” work - short story writer. shop—especially designed for non-writers—was Barry has received numerous awards and the subject of a New York Times Maga zine arti - honors for her work, among them two William cle and is the basis for her award-winning Eisner awards, the American Library Asso cia- book What It Is . She is currently an associate tion’s Alex Award, the Washington State Gover - professor in interdisciplinary creativity and no r’s Award, the Wisconsin Library Asso cia tion’s director of the Image Lab at the Wisconsin RR Donnelly Award, the Holtz Center for Institutes for Discovery, and the Chazen Family Science & Technology Outreach Fellowship, and Distinguished Chair in Art at the University of the 2017 Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Wisconsin –Madison. At UWM she has also led Award from the National Cartoonists Society.