John Kevin Jones: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more.”

<Music Up>

“NY” composed and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed: That’s actor John Kevin Jones performing “The Raven”. It’s one of the works he enacts in the one-man show, Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.

Imagine, if you will, a four-story 19th century family home in Lower Manhattan preserved virtually intact with original furnishings and personal belongings. That’s the Merchant’s House Museum and its candle-lit Greek revival salon provides the perfect spooky setting for Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe. John Kevin Jones performs four of Edgar Allen Poe’s best-known works: “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Pit and the Pendulum” and as you heard, “The Raven”. This Summoners Ensemble Theater production doesn’t rely on props. John Kevin Jones instead relies on the text and his ability to inhabit and interpret the characters. He transforms seamlessly from madman, to elegant wine aficionado, to prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, to grieving lover. It’s a tour-de-force from the veteran actor who has become known for his other one-man show, A Christmas Carol, which has been performed at the Merchant’s House Museum for the past six holiday seasons, with number seven slated to begin in late November. Given the success of A Christmas Carol, it made sense for Summoners Ensemble Theater to team up with the Merchant’s House Museum for another evening, this time of Poe’s literary macabre during Halloween season. It’s appropriate, but it’s still no small undertaking. And I wondered how long the idea of Killing an Evening with Edgar Allen Poe had been percolating.

John Kevin Jones: Well, it’s crazy, because years and years ago, when I was in junior high, it was the first time I’d read Edgar Allan Poe—was “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and I was an actor way back then working in community theaters and in my school, and I thought, “What a great monologue “The Tell-Tale Heart” would make on its feet,” and that idea has sort of followed me around throughout my life. And, of course, the opportunity never really arose until I had been working with The Merchant’s House Museum and of course, our little company, Summoner’s Ensemble Theater is producing A Christmas Carol at The Merchant’s House there for the last seven years. So I thought, “What about bringing Edgar Allan Poe’s work into this incredible space?” which is a preserved 19th century home, very much like a salon of that time. And I thought, “Why not bring Poe into this as well?” So, we started with “Tell-Tale Heart”, because that was really my childhood wish in a very direct kind of way, and I wanted to make that happen, and then we set about choosing other pieces to fill it out and make it more of an evening.

Jo Reed: And you choose four pieces of Poe’s to present during the evening, and you talked about “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The other—Tell me about the other three and how you chose them.

John Kevin Jones: Well, the other three—of course, we wanted to do “The Raven” since that is the piece that brought him the most fame, and I think that when people come to hear Edgar Allan Poe, they would feel—given short shrift if we didn’t give them “The Raven” as well, so we decided we would definitely do that, and also, I love that poem. It’s very near and dear to my heart, especially as I get older and experience the kind of grief that he speaks about in that poem. But in terms of rounding out the rest of the evening, we wanted to choose a couple of stories that would contrast “Tell-Tale Heart” and the character that drives the narrative there. So, we looked at The Cask of Amontillado and I love that story, because first, it’s just to beautifully constructed. We tasked ourselves with the horrible, unenviable task of editing the piece down to the character arc, because it is very long and to make—to make the evening complete and yet interesting we wanted to edit it down a bit. “Tell-Tale Heart” is in full, but we did edit down “Cask of Amontillado” a little bit to show the very cold heart of this killer, and how he tells us about all the things that he’s done. He’s quite proud of them. But that contrasts “Tell-Tale Heart” where you have this deranged person who really, truly believes that he had some sort of right to end his suffering by taking this other man’s life. And then, we also chose “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and the reason we chose that again, as a form of balance. This story is told by a victim, and so we get to hear someone who has been subjected to horrible circumstances and what their experience is there, and of course, if you’re familiar with “Pit and the Pendulum” it is a PTSD-inducing story. It is really a horrific imagining of what the Inquisition was all about.

Jo Reed: Well, you know, there is gory scary, and then there’s the “boo” kind of scary.

John Kevin Jones: Yes.

Jo Reed: But Poe does something else entirely.

John Kevin Jones: He does the chilling. He does the—the uncanny, the things that make you question your own—your own motives and other people’s motives and make you look over your shoulder when you’re walking down the street or wonder about the people that are around you and what they might be capable of. I—I think that he has a real way of getting under our skin with that kind of terror. But then also, with “Pit and the Pendulum”, of course, you know, he really tries to use sensory perception so that you really get a feeling of the odors in this prison, the darkness of the prison. These are all the things that begin to affect the senses, and then of course, he does talk about some other things like rats, and one of the things I love during the show is, as I’m telling the story, is to see as the rats come up to see the audience they all go into a self-comfort pose. <laughs> It’s very—You can see them all go, “Oh, God,” and you know, you can see them—see the ideas falling over them, and that is very exciting from an actor’s perspective, of course.

Jo Reed: From what I understand, Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe is less a play than an enactment of these four pieces.

John Kevin Jones: Yes. Yes. Since Poe writes in the first person, which I think is really fascinating, too, because when you read it, it’s almost as if it’s you who is telling the story, sometimes as you’re reading it. But in this case, all these characters are coming to life, and so the—the crazy, deranged person in “The Tell-Tale Heart” who is plotting the demise of the old man—we’re never really sure of what their relationship actually is. In fact, Poe never tells us if that narrator is a man or a woman. Of course, in my case it is me. But, we do try to bring these characters to full life so that people get a sense of being in the room with these people.

Jo Reed: Are there props? Are there costumes?

John Kevin Jones: There are some props. I mean, we—we try to keep everything very limited, and that kind of goes back to what we did with Christmas Carol, too. We don’t like a lot of bells and whistles that take us away from the words of the author, because that’s really central to what we do at Summoners. We’re really interested in highlighting the actual words of our authors, and so, choosing props—in “Tell-Tale Heart”, this year we have a little surprise. I won’t give it away, but there is a little surprise. Well, I guess everybody does it, so it’s not going to hurt if I say that there’s a small heartbeat somewhere in there, but that’s really all. With “Cask of Amontillado”, I envision that this character is making a kind of confession, a confession for which he feels no remorse about, but a confession nonetheless, and so we’ve given him a—a rosary, and he begins kneeling, sort of at a church. And then, for “Pit and the Pendulum” we really went outside the box with that, and we have a—a very different way of telling that story. I’m using a—an artist’s doll to highlight the uncomfortable and sensory nature of this man’s journey, and we’re still actually working on that. We spent a lot of time with it in rehearsal, and then we spent a lot of time with it in front of the audience, and we like where it’s going, and we like what it does. I never feel the work is finished, and so—which my director is—she’s okay with that. I call—I called her today earlier, and I actually told her I had an idea about the piece, and she said, “Oh, God. What is it?” <laughs> So—so, we have—we have a very frank working relationship, but I never feel like the work is finished, and that piece in particular continues to grow, and I love where it’s going. But we do try to keep props to a bare minimum, because I want the audience to really focus on the words of Poe and how he strikes our imagination.

Jo Reed: So, you’re playing this in The Merchant’s House Museum.

John Kevin Jones: Yes.

Jo Reed: The museum is doubly pertinent to Poe. Well, the museum is doubly pertinent to Poe, right? I mean, he lived in that neighborhood in Manhattan around the time the house was actually built.

John Kevin Jones: Exactly. In fact, when “The Raven” was published, I think that was 1845, he lived right around the corner on Amity Street, which is now West 3rd, and he actually started writing “The Cask of the Amontillado” in that house. He retooled “The Raven” in that house, and he started some other works in that home as well. So, it really was, that particular area, was really of deep historical significance for Edgar Allan Poe’s writings.

Jo Reed: What room in the museum do you use for the play?

John Kevin Jones: The Greek Revival parlor, the double Greek Revival parlor. It’s absolutely stunning.

Jo Reed: And I would imagine it’s a very intimate space.

John Kevin Jones: It is. We can only—we can only seat about 45 people in the space and we do it sort of in a three-quarter thrust, so we have—I joke with the audience that we have the longest first row in town, and that way everybody gets to be very close to the action, and still feel like they’re in the room, which, I think, is not something that you really get when you just tour the Museum, which is not to say that I’m discouraging you from—anybody from touring the Museum. I think it’s well worth doing. But when you’re actually in a performance and you get to sit there and feel yourself in the room among these mouldings that are among the finest mouldings throughout the country. I think they’ve been designated as being the—the best representation of 19^th century moulding in—in the world, I think, and so beautifully intact. That’s what’s fantastic about the room. You really do feel like you are in the 19^th century when you’re in that room.

Jo Reed: How is it for you as a performer to be performing in a space that is so intimate?

John Kevin Jones: Well, it’s very tight, and of course, you know, it’s like performing for young people. There’s no fooling. You know, if you are not right on your mark, and if you are not being authentic, your audience lets you know, and I feel very fortunate with working with Rhonda. She and I have been able to bring the work that--

Jo Reed: She’s the director, correct?

John Kevin Jones: She is my director, yes, and—and I think that we have been able to bring the characters to a kind of authenticity so that the audience loses me and they are watching Poe’s character at that point, which I think is fantastic for it to be that close, but it really does mean that I have got to be on point with every performance and every night, because if you’re that close to an audience, they can see if you’re having a moment.

Jo Reed: Can you feel them getting scared?

John Kevin Jones: You can sometimes, actually. You can kind of feel them in—in “Tell-Tale Heart”. It’s fantastic, because of course, in the beginning of that story this character is actually kind of funny. I mean, you’re watching him and you’re listening to his rationale and it’s so bizarre and farfetched and it seems odd and so the audience laughs in the beginning. But then we make a turn, and when you make that turn all of a sudden it gets very serious, and you feel the audience become very aware of the limits of their body and where they are in space and what is happening here. And then, of course, as I said in “Pit and the Pendulum”, one of my favorite things is as soon as I bring up the rats, so many people just immediately, as I said, go into a comfort pose.

Jo Reed: Kevin, do you mind giving us just a taste of what you do?

John Kevin Jones: Not at all. I’ll tell you what, since it started with “Tell-Tale Heart”--

Jo Reed: That’s what I was going to suggest.

John Kevin Jones: Let me do-- Let me just do a little bit of “Tell-Tale Heart”.

Jo Reed: Perfect.

John Kevin Jones: Let’s see if I can bring this character out. “–True! Nervous. Very, very dreadfully nervous, I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all, the sense of hearing was acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in Hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” And then he goes on from there. <laughs>

Jo Reed: That’s great. Thank you. That was really fabulous.

John Kevin Jones: He’s a little nervous, that one, as he says right at the very top, but he’s a lot of fun to do. And, I think when, as you were saying, when I’m very close to the audience like that as well, as I’m moving up and down through the space, and I do come rather close to most of them, you can feel them kind of pull away as I—as I approach. “Oh, here he—here he comes,” and “Oh, and there he goes.” It’s a symbiotic relationship, for sure.

Jo Reed: Talk to me about the challenges and the opportunities for a performer doing Poe in the way that you are.

John Kevin Jones: Right. You know, I think it’s interesting. I was just thinking about this with Rhonda the other day. We had actually done a showcase of this last year before we did the full mounted production this year. And while I think we did great work last year, I’m not going to say bad things about our work, but I think that I approached it with a kind of reverence for the author that kept me from being as authentic as I wanted to be with the characters. And so, as we started examining last year’s work and moving into this year’s work, we started thinking more about, “How do we bring this voice to more authenticity, each of these voices to a deeper authenticity?” How do we let our audience really get a feeling for who these people are, and not just the writings of Poe, because Poe’s parents were actors, and whether or not—He didn’t know them, but somehow I feel like genetically, maybe, DNA-wise, the sense of drama and the sense of action and rising action was really strong in his mind, and he was able to bring that to bear on the page. So that is the challenge, is to play these characters as they are and not to try to bring a, kind of, reverence to it, but rather, let the audience be that judge as to what kind of reverence or—or attention needs to be paid to this person who’s telling the story.

Jo Reed: Poe’s work, especially his poetry, is so rhythmic.

John Kevin Jones: It really is.

Jo Reed: And sound is so important in them and, you know, the repetition of words and phrases. And I wonder, as an actor, if this is in some ways a double-edge sword because, boy, on one hand it would be so easy to go straight over the top.

John Kevin Jones: Mm-hmm. Well, it is, and especially with “The Raven”, because of course, the rhyme scheme is internal and it’s—often it really has a very quick pace to it. So, you almost have to work against the rhyme scheme in order to bring a greater sense of understanding to the piece, but also with the other pieces. He has favorite phrases that he loves to reuse and retouch on, and his short stories are truly prose. There is really a sense of poetic license in each one of them in the way that he returns to words, but when you have a repeated word as an actor, I think one of the things you learn as a young performer is when you have something that’s repeated, you have to understand that each time you say it, it has to have specific connotations in that moment that are different from the times you’ve said it before and the times you’re about to say it. So that each time he says, for instance, in “Tell-Tale Heart”, that the noise steadily increased. He says that three times as he describes the heartbeat getting louder and louder, and he’ll say the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles in a high key and with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased. Each time I say that it has to have more import. It has to—it has to be more frightening. It has to be more terrorizing, so that you start at one place, and then work your way up into it. It does provide you a path, but it also, as you said, provides you with the possibility of falling into a rut as well, and so you have to be aware of the rut and try to arc yourself up toward the path that Poe is leading you on.

Jo Reed: How did you get into acting? What’s your acting origin story?

John Kevin Jones: Oh, gosh. I tell you, I was in junior high in Summit, New Jersey and it was 1970-something, and I was a shy, very shy, withdrawn child and to some extent I guess—I—I tell people I’m shy these days, and they’re like, “Really? I don’t believe it.” But I am a little shy, and I was very shy then, and I had a teacher who noticed that, and she got me involved in theater, and the very first play that I was in was Our Town. I got the part of Wally Webb which had one line. I was so proud of that, and I beat out my friend, Andrew Dingle for the role, which I thought was no small thing. And so, that was the first time I was on stage, and I knew from that time forward that that was what I wanted to do. Even when my father waved at me from the audience while I was on stage, <laughs> and one of my fellow friends asked me, “Wonder whose father that is?” I claimed not to know. <laughs> Even then, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. <laughs>

Jo Reed: Is that what you studied when you went to college?

John Kevin Jones: It was. I went to University of South Florida. I hadn’t really intended to go there. I had applications into other schools, but I saw a teacher; her name was Monica Steele. I saw her in a production in Florida, and I was so taken with her work that I actually sort of just barged in back stage after the show to say, “Thank you.” Her first question to me was, “How did you get back here?” and after we had had a moment to chat, she told me that she was a teacher at the University of South Florida in their theater and dance department, and at that moment I knew that I needed to study with her, because whatever she had was what I wanted and fortunately, that worked out very well. It was a—a good marriage, I guess, so to speak, that when I was in her classroom she knew how to speak to me and she knew how to guide me, and her work with voice in particular and also with just being authentic and true to yourself and the words, and the dedication to the author’s work, you know, that this is really about serving the author’s work and about being selfless in that. It’s not a place for vanity. Acting, I don’t think, is a place for vanity. I think you can have vanity and be an actor, but when you are actually performing, if you’re thinking about what other people are thinking about you or how you’re projecting yourself or how you seem to be, you cannot be living in that character and that, for me, is really the end all—be all to end all, to live in that character and be that person for a couple hours and take my audience on a journey.

Jo Reed: Okay. Here’s my next question. When were you able to quit your day job?

John Kevin Jones: Well, I still haven’t. In fact, I came directly to this interview from my day job. I’m hoping that within some time I will be able to, and if they’re listening, please don’t worry, yet. <laughs> But within the next year or so I think that Summoners Ensemble with A Christmas Carol at the Merchant’s House and with Poe pieces, it’s kind of opened up a really incredible door for both Rhonda and me, not just for our own work, either, but to reach out to other artists who can perhaps tell other stories. I would love to hear Edith Wharton at The Merchant’s House. I would love to hear Washington Irving down at South Street Seaport. I mean, there’s so many authors that I would love to hear done around the city in different places, and of course, I can’t be everywhere at one time, but we might be able to encourage other performers to step out and bring these works to a new life for a new audience and maybe even garner some interest among our young people for where we’ve come from and who we used to be, and how we lived, and how that might inform our future.

Jo Reed: You’re executive director of the Summoners Ensemble Theatre.

John Kevin Jones: I am. I am. I have been since 2013.

Jo Reed: Tell me about the Theatre and what its mission is, when it was formed.

John Kevin Jones: Well, when it was formed, it was in 1994. That was a group of Circle in the Square students who had graduated and they formed it in order to create new works and also to give themselves the opportunity to take over all of the roles that are involved in producing a play in theater, so director, producer, PR, marketing, ticketing, all of those aspects. And over the years, they went and found different paths in their lives, and Rhonda, who was one of the original members of that, was the last, sort of, sole survivor, and she came to a point where she was either going to fold the company or move forward with it, and she approached me and a few other people about that, and we all said, “Oh, let’s not lose this opportunity. Let’s see what we can do with this,” and we did change the mission. The original mission, of course, was for them to create their new works. For me, the mission broadened out a bit more, and so it became, “How can we bring literature to life?” I thought that would be an exciting way for that company to move forward, and for us to—to grow a bit. I had no idea back then when we thought about it, that Christmas Carol would become such a juggernaut and such a wonderful thing. I look forward to it every year. Telling that story is-- It’s almost like my family is with me, and I’ve lost most of them, unfortunately. So, when I tell that story I feel like they’re right there telling the story with me, and it’s—it’s such an exciting thing. But people love that story, and so--

Jo Reed: It’s a great story. What’s not to love?

John Kevin Jones: It really is. It is, and—my favorite comment when people leave is that they feel like they’ve never heard the story before. And I think that’s the power of Dickens’ words, of his actual language, when you take away the bells and the whistles and all of the other stuff, which is fine. There are lots of productions around the country that, you know, involve huge casts, and they’re—they’re great, but this pares it down just to his words, just to what he was talking about, in much the same way with Poe, and for me that’s so exciting. And so, that sort of took off, and then it became, “Gosh, this is a real thing. What—what do we have here?” And so, this has been a most happy accident to be a part of this, and to have come through with Christmas Carol and now with Edgar Allan Poe, and in the future, I mean, next year we want to do more Poe stories, and open up a series B so that we have both the series that we’re doing this year, plus a new series, and we were also reading Frederick Douglas, his autobiography.

Jo Reed: Yeah.

John Kevin Jones: Wouldn’t that be a marvelous thing to hear an actor take an edited version of that into an hour and let us hear what it was like to really be this man and to maybe do it in a space in Harlem that was specific to him or a space in Midtown that was specific to him, and you’d get a real sense of the fullness of the history of this man in this moment, because his writing, beyond being pertinent, it’s also good story telling. It’s—it’s beyond being historic, it’s just good story telling, and if you can tell a good story, I think you can actually affect people’s minds and hearts, and I would hope that that’s why we get involved as actors and artists and directors in theater, that we want to steer the conversation by effecting the way people’s minds and hearts perceive the world around them. Certainly, like I said, with Christmas Carol, I think again, one of my other favorite things to see there is when, oftentimes we’ll have men of a certain age brought by their wives, and you can kind of spot that they’re not totally thrilled or understanding what it is they’re about to see, and they sit down and they cross their arms, and the story starts, and then it gets to the part where Tiny Tim—Spoiler alert, everyone. Tiny Tim is dying in the future, and you see these men make such a turn in their emotional state, and they become really choked up, and oftentimes, when they’re leaving the house, because I—I say goodnight to everybody as they leave, because Fezziwig talks—Dickens talks about Fezziwig saying goodnight to all his party guests, and so we do that also. We—we feel like that’s an important part of the story, and so when I say goodnight, some of these men will press my hand, and they really just cannot speak, and I think that is the highest praise of all, because they came in with some questions and some doubts and they left full of hope for themselves, for their own—their own transformation in this world, and how exciting is that?

Jo Reed: I think that’s wonderful, and I think with theater, the point is it’s something that the actor and the audience, they experience together, but I think in a historic building like that, with the size of the audience that you’re dealing with, that has to be so much more profound.

John Kevin Jones: I—I think you’re right. I think you’re right. I think that when you do something in a much larger space, the audience is more apt to sit back and watch, and remove themselves from what they’re seeing on stage, which is, like I said, that’s fine.

Jo Reed: Yeah, of course. There are many ways to see things.

John Kevin Jones: Yeah, absolutely. But in this particular way, it really requires you to lean forward. It really—Well, it doesn’t require you to lean forward, but it does urge you to, and in some way silently move you in that direction, and so you do lean into the words and you do lean into the meaning of what’s being said, and it—it also, because you’re in a small group, even for that one moment, this little group of 45 people sitting in a double Greek parlor in an 1832 home, are a community. Now, they may never be in the same room together again. They may only pass each other on the streets, but for that hour, in that room, this group is a community, and I think that’s sorely lacking in our world today. And, I mean, I’d hate to sound like the old 55-year-old that I am, because I certainly use my social media and my phone in excess just like everybody else, but at the same time, I think there needs to be a balance and there needs to be an understanding that sometimes you have to put the phone down. Sometimes you have to put the screen away. Sometimes you have to lean in and get close to the action.

Jo Reed: Yeah, and there is something about theater, live performance, that is so compelling.

John Kevin Jones: I can’t agree with you more. I love movies, and film, and television, of course, and all of it is wonderful.

Jo Reed: Yeah, me too.

John Kevin Jones: But there’s something about being in the room. It’s immediate. It’s undeniable.

Jo Reed: And ephemeral. It will never happen the same way again.

John Kevin Jones: Yes, exactly. That performance is yours and you—when you leave after seeing a performance, whether it’s Linda Vista on Broadway, which I’m only shouting out because I just saw it and it was really good, <laughs> or if you’re seeing my show, when you leave you absolutely feel like that happened, that occurred, and it is your performance that you take away. The next night, whoever leaves after that next night, that’s their performance. That’s what they saw. So, it is very special. It’s rare.

Jo Reed: Okay, Kevin, I’m going to be really pushy. Is it possible for you to do a little of “The Raven”?

John Kevin Jones: Sure. Absolutely. Well, let’s start from the beginning and see where—see how far we get.

Jo Reed: Okay, perfect. Thank you.

John Kevin Jones: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more.” Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly, I had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore. For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore. Nameless here forever more. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; so that now, to still the beating of my heart I stood repeating, “‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door. This it is and nothing more.” Presently, my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly, your forgiveness I implore; but the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, that I scare was sure I heard you.” Here, I opened wide the door. Darkness there and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; but the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, and the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?” This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore.” Merely this and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice; let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore. Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; ‘Tis the wind and nothing more!” Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, in there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore; not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; but with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door. Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door. Perched, and sat, and nothing more.” And then, if we want to know what the raven does, come see my show.

Jo Reed: Perfect. That was lovely. Thank you so much, Kevin.

John Kevin Jones: Thank you.

Jo Reed: It was such a pleasure.

John Kevin Jones: Oh, Josephine, thank you.

Jo Reed: It really, really was.

John Kevin Jones: I’m so glad you had me on. Thank you so much.

<Music Up>

Jo Reed: That’s actor John Kevin Jones. His one-man show, Killing an Evening with Edgar Allen Poe, will run through November 2nd. For more information about Killing an Evening with Poe or about their upcoming show A Christmas Carol, go to Summoners Ensemble.org.

You've been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. You can subscribe to Art Works wherever you get your podcasts, so please do. And then, leave us a rating on Apple because it really does help people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

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