Kellams: Edgar Allan Poe is returning to the historic Headquarters House in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Classical Theatre produced "The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story" at the home built in the mid-19th century last year. The immersive experience allowing patrons to follow Poe and the play from room to room had a capacity of about 30 people. Back by popular demand and now with a capacity of 33 people in the audience, the play opens again Friday night.
It was originally written by David Rice for a staging in a specific Chicago mansion. When Arkansas Classical Theatre reached out to Rice about producing it in Fayetteville, he rewrote the script so it could be specifically staged at the Headquarters House.
Late last week, Justin Fletcher, who portrays Poe, and Steven Marzolf, the director, came to the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio to talk about "The Madness of Poe." I asked Marzolf about the chance to direct a play that is written for a specific space.
Marzolf: I don't think it happens that often.
Kellams: I can think of the Globe Theatre, perhaps.
Marzolf: Yeah. I mean, seriously. I mean, because, of course, Shakespeare was writing for that space. Definitely. I would say a lot of directors know that they're going to be writing for a proscenium space or in the round or something like that.
But to know that it's going to be done in this house, which is its own character, by the way, and I'm excited for folks not only to see the show, but to see the house itself, which has so much history from the Civil War. And is this so interesting, the architecture of it and the feel of the house, like it just feels kind of spooky. It feels very spooky, actually. But I don't think that that happens very often, that you actually have a play that is written for a specific house that has a specific environment to it, layout and everything.
Kellams: Yeah. All right. Edgar Allan Poe, one of the Americans who so many people know, think they might know a little of, right? Probably don't know really a lot about real truth. How do you bring Edgar Allan Poe to us?
Fletcher: Well, I mean, doing a lot of research first, because, I mean, I think you're right. I think there's this wide conception of who Edgar Allan Poe is. People love to use him in scary movies and different television shows. It's like, "Oh, there's the picture of Edgar Allan Poe." He's looking very sad and down, but he was really a completely different person for most of his life. He was athletic, he was charming, he was playful.
He was also a prolific writer of so many things other than his horror stories, literature, I mean, literary criticism, humor, science fiction, invented the detective story, all of these things that people don't realize about him and just put him into this little small box of drunkard, genius madmen. And there is a little truth to that, but it's much smaller than people think it is, but there's so much more of his life was full of greatness, a lot of tragedy, but a lot of joy as well.
Kellams: But what do we see Poe go through? Or how does Poe manifest in front of us?
Fletcher: Well, I mean, the show is meant to thrill the audience with some of his best work, and I think we do a pretty good job of that. But alongside that, you've got a story of who Poe was, and especially who he was with his wife, Virginia, and the kind of connection that they had. And you get to see a little bit of that playfulness. You get to see that joy that he had for many years of his life.
And in this play, he is trapped more in the horror of his stories, while his wife is sort of watching it from the outside. So it's a struggle for him to figure out, is he going to be able to escape from his own mind and his own creations?
Kellams: How old was he when he died?
Fletcher: 40.
Kellams: 40. Way too young. So let me ask this challenge for a director. You want this to be, I mean, this is unusual, right? I think this is the sort of thing that might attract people who don't usually go to theater. So it's an event. Not to say other theater isn't, you know what I'm saying? It's a different, so you want that feel. You want to deliver on that, but you also still want to deliver good theater.
Marzolf: Yeah. It's interesting because the impetus for this was, it was the winter of 2020 for the Edgar Allan Poe Speakeasy, came to Northwest Arkansas, and it was at the Apollo Theater in Springdale. And I went and saw it, and it was packed. They had maybe seven or eight performances that day and 250 people. And there was a line outside of the Apollo.
And so I went to it, saw it, and it was a much shorter version from what we're doing. Actors would get up and just sort of recite some poems, but they would have alcoholic beverages paired with it. And it was an experience. It was really fun.
And I talked to a lot of people in the audience afterwards and said, "Oh, we're interested in maybe doing this play." This is before we were 100% sold on it. And what the audience members were telling me was, "We don't really go to theater, but we're interested. We love Poe, and we're interested in experiences," like you said. And so that made me think, "Oh, this might be really, really interesting to do." And especially in like a site-specific place.
So yes, that sense of experience, because this is something different than sitting in a proscenium theater in a dark theater. You're moving around the house, very, very intimate. It's sometimes a foot or less away from the actors. But then also, yeah, I mean, it's really important to have the good theater and the educational aspect, like Justin was talking about with Poe, versus this theatrical experience that is highlighting the experience part of this.
And so it is sort of a balance between that, "Hey, we want to put on a really kick-butt play." But then also we want it to be fun and have this non, sort of traditional theater feel to it. And I think that was the big thing we learned last year is that we could do that. And so that is one of the big reasons why we're remounting it.
Yes, of course, folks saying, "Oh, I wish we could have seen this," but we found a really good balance last year of, you're going to learn things here. I think the performances are really great. The design is interesting with how it works inside this house, but it's also an experiential event.
Fletcher: And you really do feel like you're in someone's house eavesdropping on the conversation because they're literally maybe even less than a foot from you at times, and having the action that close to you. And some of it's pretty boisterous. It's just an experience that you don't get from going to see a normal sit-down theater sort of production.
Kellams: Would it work if I'm there, I'm that close. I think of myself as just a ghost in Poe's house.
Fletcher: It's funny you say that, because I was asked a question about this not too long ago. And Poe, in the madness that he's in, does not see the audience. He's really wrapped up in his own mind. But with the lighting and how close they are, I did liken it. It's like I'm surrounded by ghosts the entire show that I can't really see, but I can feel them. They're there, and it's super creepy, and I love it.
Marzolf: It's interesting, too, because absolutely that, and then it's like, we talk about actors transforming into different characters and whatnot, but the audience kind of does, too. So as much as they're ghosts, when we do "The Masque of the Red Death," they become partygoers. So they become something different in each story that is told. Much like Poe is being drawn into all of his stories, by the end, the entire audience is dragged in as well.
Kellams: Oh, I'm going to go in with that mindset. Do we have any idea what Poe's voice sounded like?
Fletcher: We know where he was from. And based on, he grew up in several places. He was born in Boston. He lived in Baltimore, but most of his formative years were either in Virginia or somewhat in England. So the going theory is that he had what's called a Tidewater accent, which is very, very Southern, very, what you might think is a typical regal type of Southern accent. But of course, there's no recording, so who knows? He could have had a New York accent, for all we know.
Kellams: No, no, I want what you were just saying, because that just works with Southern Gothic.
Fletcher: Exactly.
Kellams: All right. What is it, you think of other auteurs who are synonymous with suspense or horror? Stephen King, Anne Rice, Alfred Hitchcock. If you said we were going to do something at the Headquarters House and it's Stephen King, people, those are beloved figures, but they don't have the aura, the atmosphere of Poe, who's been gone for more than a century and only lived for 40 years. What's going on? Why do we like him so much?
Marzolf: I think he really, it's like the whole sense of the psychological thriller. And he really taps into that. There is so much, just like in Shakespeare, there's so much humanity in Shakespeare, that I think Poe does this really great job of balancing between the humanity of what it means to be human, but then also all of our hopes and dreams, but especially the fears and the tragedies that we have. And there is such an aura. And Justin, maybe you can go deeper into this since you're playing the role, of what that aura is like.
But I will say this, that how we think of Poe is all funneled through someone who was his rival. His name is Rufus Griswold. And so when they were clashed literary, like, yeah, a lot of conflict between them. And so when Poe died, Rufus Griswold wrote his obituary, and sort of what that is, is what has become sort of who Poe is, and the sense of all the stuff that Justin talked about, this mad person, maybe kind of genius, but more of a drunkard and all of this. But that's not who he was.
So I think that's part of it. But then also, I do think that he finds such an interesting mix of humanity, but also like really is able to, through his words, really tap into what our fears are as human beings.
Fletcher: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the irony, is that Griswold's piece was meant to be a hit piece and to tarnish the reputation of Poe forever. And what he ended up doing was actually making him more appealing than ever to everyone.
Kellams: Yeah, we're not here talking about the Rufus Griswold experience that's coming up.
Fletcher: Right, exactly. And no one is as captivated by, I mean, even some of his, the writers that were around at the same time. I mean, Longfellow was a great writer, but do people get excited about going to see Longfellow at the Headquarters House? I mean, maybe, I don't know, but I would argue that Poe's mystique, there is a mystique around him. So like Steven said, that is a part of it. And I think that's a big part of it because people identify with that, and there's a danger to it that they enjoy.
But at the end of the day, most people are reading these stories when they're in high school, at least in this country, or younger. So, and you've got "The Red Badge of Courage" that you're reading, or you've got "The Tell-Tale Heart," and where "The Tell-Tale Heart," the guy's murdering someone and chopping them up and putting them under the floorboards. I mean, that captures the imagination in a way that other writers just don't.
He was so good at it. I mean, other people wrote this type of story. He didn't invent. He didn't invent, with "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," the detective story. But the horror story had been around for hundreds of years at this point. But he was so great at it that it just stood out above all the rest and immediately drew the attention of the American audience.
Kellams: Are you going to have a production in a very atypical theater-type space? It takes work mounting. You've got to reach some people you don't usually reach. How do you do this? How do you, you've got to have help. You've got to have support.
Marzolf: Oh, so many people that are supporting us, certainly everybody that's working on the production. But two individuals that are really been instrumental in this, Bo Counts, who is with Pinpoint and started Nightmare on Block Street. So Bo has been super, super helpful and is sponsoring us in this production. And in fact, Nightmare on Block Street kicks off Sept. 25, week from this Friday, from today.
Kellams: Yeah, as we're talking.
Marzolf: Yes. And which is when we open. And so we're sort of kicking off Nightmare on Block Street. So shout-out to Bo and all of the help that he's given us. But then also the Washington County Historical Society for allowing us to be at the historic Headquarters House, because this play would not have the same energy and feel to it if it was not for them and in this particular space.
Fletcher: Absolutely. I mean, as I mentioned before, the house really is a member of the ensemble. And it's so time-appropriate, era-appropriate. If you did do a Stephen King thing in the Headquarters House, I mean, I'm sure it would be scary. "'Salem's Lot." That's scary no matter where you do it. But since it ties so much into the actual time and place of Poe, it just, you feel transported back to that time and to that mindset of his.
Kellams: Justin Fletcher is Edgar Allan Poe in 1849 in the Arkansas Classical Theatre production of "The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story" by David Rice. Each of the 2026 productions will take place at the Headquarters House in Fayetteville. Opening night is Friday night, and there will be performances through Halloween, Oct. 31. More information about the play and tickets can be found by following links at arkansasclassicaltheatre.com. We also spoke with Steven Marzolf, who is the director of the play.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
