Creator of the critically acclaimed Sabrina, Nick Drnaso's highly anticipated new graphic novel, Acting Class, has arrived.  In the 248 full color, flat, heavyweight, off-white pages of this hardcover volume, role playing and reality mix it up in the shared headspace of a group of adults who are drawn to the idea of inhabiting new characters as a reult of difficulties in their own lives.  Almost immediately, the destabilizing effects of the acting lessons set the stage for the dissolution of borders between actor and role and an ever increasing sense of disorientation.

Set in a world in which all forms of remote communication are quite notably absent – no television, no mobile phones (or, indeed, telephones of any kind), no social media, no internet, no computers – one gets the sense that with Acting Class, Drnaso has created a diagram of the functioning of these platforms and devices, and a model of the illusory spaces that they have opened in our individual minds, as well as in our collective society; is offering us a chance to step back and take a look at it from the outside. 

Acting Class poses the questions, who are we when we pretend to be someone else, and what becomes of our lives? 

Dive right in with this PDF preview from D & Q.

And then keep going with this hefty excerpt from the New Yorker.