By Ben Cox
Lo! ’tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years —
A mystic throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
~ Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm” (1843)
The life of Edgar Allan Poe is as much tragedy as it is beauty. His life was mirrored more in his poetry than in his more macabre short stories and literary criticism.
As a giant among the dark romantic writers of the mid-19th century, Poe’s work continues to captivate audiences and introduce students to the canon of American Literature in schools across the nation.
In his own work, Poe presented a command of language that was rich in both symbolism and syntactical genius. He would go on to influence both horror and mystery writers alike as well as poets who would focus on the darker themes of life and death.
“Ravens and Tombstones: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe” is a program that will be presented over two nights in Jacksonville and Winchester by local partners in art, Dr. Robert Seufert and Sherri Mitchell.
The two performers have combined for some acclaimed performances over the last handful of years. Their performances have encompassed the British Isles poets, Robert Burns, Halloween themes, Christmas themes and Sherlock Holmes among others.
With Halloween upon the doorstep, the two artists have constructed a musical, lyrical, psychological and chronological review of Poe’s poetry that shows the development of the early poet as a young man in love to an artist attempting to grapple with the tragedy and mistakes of his adult life.
Seufert gave me a preview of the two nights of performance that are upcoming at the Jacksonville Public Library on Wednesday, October 29 from 7-9 p.m. and then again on Thursday, October 30 from 7-9 p.m. at the Winchester Old School Museum, located at 110 East Cherry Street. Admission is free to either show.
Ben Cox: You’ve got a special spooky Halloween-themed performance coming up here at the Jacksonville Public Library and in Winchester, too. Could you tell me a little bit about this performance you have put together about Edgar Allan Poe?
Dr. Robert Seufert: My partner in art, Sherri Mitchell, and I like to perform shows together partly to showcase her fabulous talents. I write the shows.
Last year, we did one based on macabre poetry at the Jacksonville Public Library for Halloween. And that was a great success. We’ve done other shows, Christmas and several other shows, one about the British Isles, poetry of the British Isles. This year it seemed like a fine occasion to just gather some of Poe’s poetry and [I] tried to make some chronological and psychological sense of his life through his poems, because they are connected, deeply connected.
I found that the show not only did that, it gave a really deeper insight into Poe the man, and not just the macabre stereotype, but it also provided Sherri and me opportunities to perform in ways that challenged us.
It’s been a great show. We will be in costume and Ali Jones at the [Jacksonville] library has promised a sufficient, spooky atmosphere to make the evening feel very Halloween-y and exciting.
BC: Now, is the poetry arranged in kind of a chronological order of Poe’s life from “Tamerlane and Other Poems” forward, or does it kind of bounce around as far as the performance for dramatic effect?
RS: Well, mostly it’s chronological, but what we found is that with Poe, sometimes he anticipated psychological and emotional states that he himself would go through before he had actually gone through them. It’s a unique characteristic of Poe.
What we did was, although we mostly stuck through chronology, we found ourselves fudging a little bit in the interests of revealing something about a deeper psychological portrait of the man, so we ended up finding poems that were suitable to those psychological and spiritual states that he was going through. So, the performance does both.
BC: Will you be bringing a bottle of cognac and three roses with you? (For the uninitiated fans of Poe, this question is in reference to the “Poe Toaster.” The sobriquet refers to the mysterious figure who, for several decades, paid an annual tribute to Poe by visiting his cenotaph marking his original grave in Baltimore, Maryland in the early morning hours of his birthday January 19. The shadowy figure, dressed in black with a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf, would pour himself a glass of cognac and raise a toast to Poe’s memory, then vanish into the night, leaving three roses in a distinctive arrangement and the unfinished bottle of liquor.)
RS: No, I leave that tradition to other devotees besides myself.
BC: Will there be any requested participation by the audience? What should a showgoer expect from the performance?
RS: One thing is there will be biographical background, illuminating facets of Poe’s life that people might not really be familiar with. There will be the poems dramatically read by Sherri and me. Also there are two song versions of Poe’s poems that I leave to Sherri, since she’s the performer with the beautiful voice.
She herself has set a poem called “Eulalie,” which Poe indicated is a song, but no one [until now] has set it to music. She has set it to a [Robert] Schumann song, a well-known Schumann lead and so it works. She manages to bring it off, so she’s really provided music for the poem.
Then, there is a version that was sung by Joan Baez some years ago of “Annabel Lee,” which I happened to have on an old record. Sherri managed to find the score for that, and so she sings that more or less to end the show. It’s that dimension, that musical dimension, which when you’re dealing with Sherri Mitchell, it’s hard not to include, but no direct audience participation this time around.
BC: And last but not least, give me the details of the two shows because you have an encore performance setup.
RS: The first show will be at the Jacksonville Public Library on Wednesday, October 29th at 7 p.m. The show is free and open to the public. We welcome the public to attend, and I really think it will put them in the mood for Halloween.
Then, it turned out that the Old School Museum here in Winchester had asked me to put on some sort of show at the museum. We were going to do a Christmas show, but they’re usually closed at that time. Instead we decided on the Poe show.
It will be performed the following night at the Old School Museum in Winchester on Thursday, October 30th at 7 p.m. as well. Again, admission is free and all are invited.
The funny thing is that we keep saying during the rehearsal of every show, I think this is the best show. Yet, at the moment, it seems so. I like to think that maybe we just get better and better and better. We hope for a good audience and we hope to have a wonderful time.
