White Mills Theatre Co. is pleased to announce our upcoming collaboration with Campbell House Museum and the City of Toronto, Tales of the Grotesque. An audience immersive adaptation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, the production harnesses verbatim text, movement, opera and live instrumentation to transport audiences to Toronto at the turn of the century. Premiering at Campbell House Museum during the Halloween season of 2023, Tales of the Grotesque explores Poe’s most disturbed and iconic characters, including Roderick Usher, Lenore, Annabel Lee, the Raven, Morella, Frederick Metzengerstein, and more. Set within the sprawling halls of Toronto’s oldest surviving building, the project is sure to awaken the macabre in us all.
We are urgently recasting the role of Frederick Metzengerstein, a male aged 25-38 of open ethnicity. This adaptation interprets Frederick Metzengerstein through a queer lens by combining the narrator of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator of Morella, and the titular character of Metzengerstein into one character, while further exploring themes of internalized homophobia. Unfolding as a confession to murder in which the narrator explains his side of the events in a desperate (but ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to convince the audience of his sanity, Tales of the Grotesque offers an unexpected motive behind the famous murder outlined in The Tell-Tale Heart.
Synopsis
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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, tapping at my chamber door—only this and nothing more …”
In this haunting adaptation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, join the visitors of the melancholy House of Usher on a candlelit journey into the macabre. Despite their apprehensions, a stubborn doctor, a resentful medium, and a murderer attend the funeral of an eccentric recluse—only to question the circumstances surrounding her untimely death. As they begin to outstay their welcome, they uncover evidence of a connection between their disturbing pasts and the sinister presence stalking their every move. With their secrets exposed, they must be willing to summon their ghosts to survive the supernatural forces
