Nevermore SGuide 2012

Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Nevermore
Education Guide
Page 1
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 2
Setting The Stage
Credits
Book written by Julian Wiles
Directed by Julian Wiles
Set Design by Ken Barnett
Costume Design by Barbara Young
Lighting Design by Paul Hartmann
Theatre Etiquette
Discuss proper audience behavior with your students. While applause, laughter, and
reaction, when appropriate, are appreciated and anticipated, unnecessary noise or
movement can distract the actors and audience members, while also affecting the quality
of the performance. It is very important that students understand how their behavior can
affect a live performance. You, the teacher, and other adult chaperones for your group are
responsible for your student’s behavior. We ask that the chaperones sit among the
students rather than together in a group behind the students. Our ushers will react to
disruptions and attempt to quell them. We reserve the right to remove any student causing
a distraction from the theatre. When entering the theatre venue please make sure all of
your students have name tags with their name and your school’s name.
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 3
MEET THE CREATORS!
JULIAN WILES
Julian Wiles is the founder and producing artistic director
of Charleston Stage Company which, under his
leadership, has grown into one of South Carolina's largest
arts organizations. Wiles has also made a major
commitment to youth education and was awarded the
National Youth Theatre Directors Award in 1988. He has
received the South Carolina Governor's Award for
Excellence and was honored with a Concurrent
Resolution from the South Carolina General Assembly for
his commitment to education in 1990. A playwright as well
as a director, Wiles has six published plays, including
FrUiTCaKeS, all of which are performed internationally.
His Nevermore! Edgar Allan Poe—The Final Mystery
premiered to sold-out houses at Charleston Stage in
1994.
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 4
CHARACTERS
Young Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Capt’n Reynolds
Homer Walker
Usher
Viscount
Valequez
Priest
Cabin Boy
Hopfrog
Acolyte
Aaron Abrams
Inspector Grimke,
Prince Prospero,
Bartender,
Mourner
Rusty
Jake- Legrand
Father
Master of Ceremonies
Constable Ross
Mr. Quary
Miguel
Synopsis of
NEVERMORE
Spoiler alert, you may not want to read this before seeing the play.
In September of 1847 Edgar Allan Poe is reported to have boarded a steamer in Baltimore
Harbor for an overnight voyage to New York City. He never arrived. Five days later, Poe was
found delirious on a Baltimore street and died soon thereafter. What transpired over those five
missing days has remained forever a mystery... until now. This imaginative play, utilizing the
macabre stories and poems of one of America's most celebrated writers, ponders what might
have happened to him on the dreary nightmare voyage at the end of his life. Filled with
masterful illusions and disappearances. Nevermore! keeps audiences on the edge of their
seats from the first curtain to the final denouement.
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 5
Curriculum Connections
The facts are these:
Edgar Allen Poe did disappear for five days prior to his death, his whereabouts and
activities are completely unknown. It is believed he boarded a ship for New York but even that
is not absolutely certain.
We do know that he was found delirious, wandering the streets of Baltimore.
Recognized by an acquaintance, he was taken to a nearby tavern and a doctor friend of Poe’s
sent for. The doctor and Poe’s relatives arranged for Poe’s transfer to nearby Washington
Hospital.
Throughout the night that followed, Poe remained delirious and delusional. Long into the
night he called out, over and over again, for someone named “Reynolds”, but no one there
knew who that was. Finally, Poe was calmed down. Three days later, after fading in and out
of consciousness, but without regaining coherence, he died.
His enemies and literary rivals were quick to blame Poe’s drinking on his demise. There
is no doubt, Poe had a problem with alcohol but many scholars believe that, in his last years,
Poe was also battling with severe mental illness. After the death of his wife Virginia to
tuberculosis, most agree, Poe was severely depressed and never the same again.
He did make an effort to stop drinking, even joining the Richmond Sons of Temperance,
but soon his was drinking again. Many believe this lead to Poe’s madness although he himself
said the drink didn’t make him mad, the madness made him drink. Some scholars have
suggested that Poe showed the symptoms of hypo-glycemia, which would explain his low
tolerance for alcohol and his delusional behavior at times. Whatever the diagnosis, Poe’s
mental condition was certainly severely impaired at the time of his death.
Who was the mysterious “Reynolds” to whom Poe called out? Many believe he was
Jeremiah Reynolds, a minor Antarctic explorer of the 19th century. Reynolds, like many during
this last age of exploration, believed that somewhere in the Antarctic region there was an
entrance to the center of the earth, perhaps to a land of paradise. Poe used this theory and the
journals Reynolds had written about his Antarctic expeditions in two of his stories. Both his
short novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. and Manuscript Found in the Bottle. tell tales
of ghostly, ghastly and ultimately ill-fated voyages to the Antarctic.
While the inspiration for Poe’s fascination with the Antarctic can be traced to Jeremiah
Reynolds there is little solid information as to the identity of Annabel Lee. Poe’s poem, Annabel
Lee, was one of the last, perhaps the last poem Poe penned before his death. No one knows
the identity of his beloved Annabel Lee, however. Perhaps she is someone biographers have
failed to discover. Most likely she was a creature only of Poe’s vivid imagination. Charleston
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 6
author and publisher Mrs. Elizabeth Verner Hamilton, in the Tradd Street Press’s Sullivans
Island Edition of The Gold Bug, speculates that perhaps Annabel Lee was a young Charleston
belle who became Poe’s first love. Poe was after all, stationed at Sullivans Island when he was
only 17, young, impressionable and adventurous. He had run away from home, joined the
army under the alias Edgar A. Perry and found himself stationed at Ft. Moultrie on Sullivans
Island. If indeed, Annabel Lee was a Charleston girl, this would of course, make Charleston
the fabled “kingdom by the sea.” This is all mere speculation, however. But wonderful
speculation, so wonderful that I borrowed this premise for Nevermore.
One final note. For the past 40 something years, on the anniversary of Poe’s death, a
mysterious lady appears at cemetery where Poe is buried. Each year, she appears at
midnight and leaves a bottle of cognac and a single white rose on his grave. No one knows the
identify of this ghostly visitor.
FACTS ABOUT EDGAR ALLAN POE
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 7
o He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809
o The second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David
Poe, Jr.
o He had an elder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister, Rosalie
Poe.
o His father abandoned their family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from
consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis).
o Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in
Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a variety of goods including tobacco, cloth, wheat,
tombstones, and slaves. The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name
"Edgar Allan Poe", though they never formally adopted him.
o In 1824 Poe served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard as Richmond
celebrated the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette.
o Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the
one-year-old University of Virginia in February 1826 to study languages. The university,
in its infancy, was established on the ideals of its founder, Thomas Jefferson. It had
strict rules against gambling, horses, guns, tobacco and alcohol, but these rules were
generally ignored. Jefferson had enacted a system of student self-government, allowing
students to choose their own studies, make their own arrangements for boarding, and
report all wrongdoing to the faculty. Poe gave up on the university after a year, and, not
feeling welcome in Richmond, especially when he learned that his sweetheart Royster
had married Alexander Shelton, he traveled to Boston in April 1827, sustaining himself
with odd jobs as a clerk and newspaper writer.
o Unable to support himself, on May 27, 1827, Poe enlisted in the United States Army as
a private.
o Poe's regiment was posted to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina and traveled
by ship on the brig Waltham on November 8, 1827.
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 8
o Poe finally was discharged on April 15, 1829, after securing a replacement to finish his
enlisted term for him. Poe traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1,
1830.
o Poe secretly married Virginia, his cousin, on September 22, 1835. He was 26 and she
was 13, though she is listed on the marriage certificate as being 21. On May 16, 1836,
he had a second wedding ceremony in Richmond with Virginia Clemm, this time in
public
o In June 1840, Poe published a prospectus announcing his intentions to start his own
journal, The Stylus.
o On January 29, 1845, his poem "The Raven" appeared in the Evening Mirror and
became a popular sensation.
o One theory, dating from 1872, indicates that cooping – in which unwilling citizens who
were forced to vote for a particular candidate were occasionally killed – was the cause
of Poe's death.
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
TALES
"The Black Cat"
"The Cask of Amontillado"
"A Descent into the Maelström"
"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
"The Gold-Bug"
"Hop-Frog"
"The Imp of the Perverse"
"Ligeia"
"The Masque of the Red Death"
"Morella"
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
"The Oval Portrait"
"The Pit and the Pendulum"
"The Premature Burial"
"The Purloined Letter"
"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"
o "The Tell-Tale Heart”
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
POETRY
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
"Al Aaraaf"
"Annabel Lee"
"The Bells"
"The City in the Sea"
"The Conqueror Worm"
"A Dream Within a Dream"
"Eldorado"
"Eulalie"
"The Haunted Palace"
"To Helen"
"Lenore"
"Tamerlane"
"The Raven"
"Ulalume"
Page 9
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 10
OTHER WORKS
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Politian (1835) – Poe's only play
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) – Poe's only complete novel
"The Balloon-Hoax" (1844) – A journalistic hoax printed as a true story
"The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) – Essay
Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848) – Essay
"The Poetic Principle" (1848) – Essay
"The Light-House" (1849) – Poe's last incomplete work
Discussion before the Performance
All Language Arts completes the following standards:
o Developing and using oral communication
o Understanding and reading literary texts
o Understanding and using informational texts
o Building Better vocabulary
o Developing written communication
o Developing and using research strategies
All Social Studies meets the following standards:
o Understanding of different life around them and across the world
o Understanding of different regions and human systems
All Theatre Activities meet the following standards:
– Connecting ideas and action
– Understanding characters
DISCUSSION PROMPTS
1. What do you know about Edgar Allan Poe? Have you read any of his works?
2. Read The Raven or Annabel Lee in class. Discuss themes, symbols, double entendres,
and other literary devices within.
3. Read 3 or 4 of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales and draw comparisons between them.
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 11
Activities After the Performance
DISCUSSION PROMPTS
1. What were aspects of the set, costumes, sound, lighting, or props that helped set the
mood and establish the setting of the play? Did the “design” team do a good job in
making the story believable?
2. What were some of the special effects used in the show? How do you think the players
made those special effects happen…how did they do it?!
3. In a mystery or thriller, it is sometimes hard to figure out who are the “good guys” and
the “bad guys.” Who are the trustworthy characters in this piece and who have
questionable motives?
ACTIVITIES
4. What were aspects of the set, costumes, sound, lighting, or props that you would
change? Using drawings or a diorama, create a set for Nevermore. What kinds of
props or set pieces would you add to make it more believable or understandable?
5. Write a new ending! Break into groups and write a different ending. Then, assign roles
to classmates, write a script, and act out your new ending!
Resources
BOOKS
o The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1 and 2
o Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
o The Complete Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
And many more found on Amazon.com and at your local library.
FILMS
Edgar Allan Poe Classic Compilation: The Cask of Amontillado and the Tell Tale Heart (2008)
The Tomb of Ligeia / An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (Midnite Movies Double Feature) S
Charleston Stage: Nevermore Curriculum Guide
Page 12
Edgar Allan Poe - 11 Poe Tales Hosted By Christopher Lee
Biography - Edgar Allan Poe: The Mystery of Edgar Allen Poe (A&E DVD Archives) (2004)
Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit And The Pendulum
Starring Lorielle New, Stephen Hansen, Bart Voitila, et al. (2010)
WEB RESOURCES
WIKIPEDIA PAGE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe
Poe Museum Site:
http://www.poemuseum.org/index.php
The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
http://www.eapoe.org/
Poets.org
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/130