ORLANDO, Fla. – They’re calling this month “POEvember” because, on select nights, there will be three different musicals taking a look at the life of Edgar Allan Poe.
The author, who was alive from 1809 to 1849, was a short-story writer and poet best known for his tales of horror. Some of his most famous works include the poem “The Raven” and the short stories “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
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‘Edgar Allan, Eddie Poe and Edgar Perry’ presented by Fringe ArtSpace will feature Nick Ryan and Katie Hartman from the touring theatre company, The Coldharts.
“Our attraction to Poe stemmed from a desire to explore the root of the genre of American Horror. We were relatively new to creating in a framework where the goal is to disturb and unsettle the audience, and we wanted to dive head first into the ‘foundational documents,’” Ryan said.
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The duo said they first started working on ‘Edgar Allan’ in 2013. They created ‘Eddie Poe’ in 2017 and then finished ‘Edgar Perry’ just last year.
“It has been a long journey with Poe, but it is a credit to the richness of the material that we have not grown tired of it,” Hartman said.
The first show, ‘Edgar Allan,’ is a two-person musical following Poe as a pre-teen in his first year at Manor House School. He tries to gain notoriety with his classmates, but another student complicates his plans.
The second show, ‘Eddie Poe,’ focuses on Poe as a 16-year-old during his first year at the University of Virginia. As he tries to stand out among scholars, dark temptations follow him.
The third show, ‘Edgar Perry,’ is about his time in the United States Military. At 17 years old, Poe was expelled from the university, abandoned by his fiancé and estranged from his foster family. This was considered a time period when he tried to reinvent himself.
“We think the reason we have stayed with the material for so long is that there are so many aspects of Poe to mine, as well as parallels in American society during the time that he was living (1809-1849) and now,” Hartman said.
All three shows are dark comedy musicals, with performances on Nov. 10 thru 19 at the Fringe Artspace.
“We treat everything as an experiment, it is truly one of the great joys of the live theater experience. Every audience is different, so every performance is different. It’s usually when we think the shows are locked that they reveal new fun aspects that we had never considered before,” Ryan said.
Click here for information on the different shows and tickets.
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