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Poe in a candlelit study, with a glass of wine grasp - and this week, those words come alive at the Brigham Galleries, when three of Nantucket's best actors, Eric Schultz, David Lazarus and Greg Bourbeau, recite three of Poe's best-known stories as if they were the writer himself. The occasion is the Nantucket Arts Council's A Halloween Sampler: Fine Wines and Vintage Poe. Picture yourself in the company of one of the most haunted American writers - a man dogged by mental illness, death and addiction - as he muses aloud in his study, or descends the staircase in a weak and weary fever. Lazarus will be reciting "The Raven," Schultz "The Black Cat" and Bourbeau "The Tell-Tale Heart." The men will be wearing costumes courtesy of the Theatre Workshop Costume archive. "The whole concept is new to Nantucket - to use a house and make it, in people's imaginations, an author's own home in which he is addressing people," said Kate Stout, the event's artistic director. "The thing about the Poe pieces is that they're all first person, so it will be as though three Edgar Allan Poes are giving direct address to the very few people in the rooms. It will be a very exclusive evening." All three actors will rotate through the different rooms in the gallery, so that the audience members may hear all three stories without having to circulate throughout the house. The event is the brainchild of NAC member Sarah Strubel, who attended a similar event at a closed winery in Pennsylvania. Though Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" has ties to Nantucket, Strubel eschewed it for three of Poe's better-known stories - all three of which relate the untimely deaths of men and women in proximity to the narrator, some at the narrator's hands and some not. "It's different from a reading, where you sit there and get talked at. And it's different from a stage performance, because the audience can be standing or sitting or they can mill - as if they were attending Poe as he was thinking out loud," Stout said. Theater on-location is becoming more popular in the Northeast. In the fall of 2005, for example, the Brave New World Repertory Theater performed "To Kill a Mockingbird" using the house fronts and porches of a Victorian section of Flatbush, Brooklyn. These performances are generally more immersive for audience members, and their production costs are limited. Candlelit and intimate, the night of Poe will include a tasting of seasonal wines and cheeses from Annye's Whole Foods - with all proceeds benefiting the Nantucket Arts Council's scholarship fund. The wines will be Layer Cake's 2005 Shiraz (from the Barrosa Valley), Budini's 2003 Malbec (from Argentina) and Hoffstadter's 2004 Pinot Bianco (from Italy). Cinco restaurant is also participating with a delicious Montiago sherry. The audience may not only consume, but also costume - although costumes aren't required. "I want the overall mood to be spooky, fun, intimate and casual," Strubel said. "The idea is to watch Poe in his study, lament over his lost love, for example"- as is the case with "The Raven." As the event's artistic director, Stout sees her primary responsibility as helping the actors to best use the space. She asked each actor only to "find a truth" in each reading relevant for the 21st Century. "I don't want Poe to be campy. I want him to come across as what he is - creepy," Stout said. "And he's a fun creepy, partly because you can only suspend disbelief so much. It's not like going to see some horror film, where you get caught up in the verisimilitude. What you can do is let Poe wash over you. It's Halloween for grownups." I AHALLOWEEN SAMPLER:
FINE WINES AND VINTAGE POE |
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