Only a literary figure with stature such as Edgar Allan Poe has an NFL team honoring his creative legacy. When the Baltimore Ravens won its first Super Bowl in 2001, playing perfect defense and winning by a score of 34-7 against the New York Giants, game announcer Chris Berman proclaimed, “Quoth the Ravens, never score!”
The team mascot is a costumed Raven named Poe, who periodically is joined by two other costumed figures at team events, named Edgar and Allan. Two ravens from the Maryland Zoo, named Rise and Conquer, also are seen at football team events. Incidentally, Charles Dickens owned the raven that inspired Poe and initially wrote about the bird in his 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge.
In the 2017 PBS American Masters film, Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive, which offered a far less melodramatic portrait of the literary giant than others have offered, Poe, as one writer put it, “had a remarkable knack for undermining himself whenever success came too close.” When he read The Raven at a public event in Boston, he ignited a scandal by insulting the city’s literary community.
But “he was not, American Masters argues persuasively, a disagreeable borderline madman who happened to write a few memorable poems and stories,” David Hinckley, a HuffPost contributor wrote in 2017. “He comes off instead as a smart guy who wanted to become famous, changed jobs all the time and was fascinated with technology. Maybe Edgar Allan Poe was the first millennial.”
In the collective hands of the six Performing Arts Coalition members at the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts, that most famous poem has inspired an hour-long production, which will receive its only performance August 29 at 7 p.m. in The Rose’s Jeanné Wagner Theatre. The companies featured are Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation, Plan-B Theatre, PYGmalion Theatre Company, Repertory Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and SB Dance.
For the 15th edition of the Performing Arts Coalition show, which has become a late August fixture for whetting the audience appetite for a new season of shows, concerts and productions, Nevermore, once again (forgive the cheekiness), signals a major creative evolution of the PAC’s programming concept for this open house performance.
For 11 years, it was Rose Exposed!, where the six companies agreed on a broad thematic concept and created their own 10-minute contributions, initially on the day of the performance and later in advance. The best realization of Rose Exposed! came in 2022, with the Birthday Suit(e) theme, to mark the building’s 25th anniversary. In 2023, it was rebranded as Mix Tape, frankly a better title for the event at the time.
The last two annual shows have been scripted around famous musical works: in 2024, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (ReFramed with script by playwright Melissa Leilani Larson) and in 2025, Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Carnival of Animals (Carnival – A Zoological Fantasy, a “fantasmagorical arrangement” by PYGMalion’s Fran Pruyn).
The formula works, as both years produced sold out houses on the theater’s main floor. However, instead of using music as the starter for this year’s show, the six companies quickly settled on Poe’s most famous poem as the source material. It appears everyone’s instincts are on the money. Ten days before the show, the house has sold out, as the balcony has been opened up for the first time in the show’s history. However, a waitlist is available here as well as at ArtTix.
In playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett’s hands, the script for Nevermore is smart comedy gold. Of course, being careful not to spoil the treasures, the following can be said: plenty of recitation, some poop jokes, brilliantly sly comments on literary criticism and a cornucopia of pop culture references including the game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.
The Raven is good fodder for absurdism. Consider its pop culture legacy. “Go to YouTube and you’ll find The Raven about the ill-omened creature given to chanting ‘Nevermore,’ read aloud by Christopher Walken, William Shatner, James Earl Jones and Lisa Simpson, Homer’s daughter,” Michael Capuzzo wrote in an essay for Smithsonian Magazine. “Poe’s tale has inspired actors such as Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, John Cusack and Huey, Dewey and Louie. The mathematician Mike Keith reworked the poem so the number of letters in each word corresponds to the first 740 digits of pi.”
Bennett’s script specifies three characters: Ham, a middle-aged, mediocre actor; Kalliope, muse of the performing arts, and Caw, a spirit as well. Bennett will also be one of the actors, joined by Aaron Asano Swenson and Noelani Brown.
The pianist this year, who typically is more than a musician in these shows, is Scott Holden, a member of the Brigham Young University music faculty. The winner in the 1996 Leschetizky New York Debut Piano Competition, Holden shortly afterward had his Carnegie Hall debut. Recent concerts have taken him from Alaska to New York, as well as China, Singapore, Vietnam and Europe. He is an alumnus of three of the country’s most prestigious music schools: The University of Michigan (The Juilliard School and The Manhattan School of Music (DMA). He also studied at The Liszt Academy in Budapest as a Fulbright Scholar.
Another new wrinkle in this year’s script is the set of Bennett’s prompts for the three dance companies whose members have just as good theatrical chops as their dance techniques and skills. Not often that dancers receive prompts such as dysentery or the dark comedic possibilities for cawing and hopping ravens, or the messed-up obsession and love affair of the characters in the heart of the poem. For these contemporary dance titans, they relish the possibilities of this unique creative brief.
Patrons for any of the county arts facilities also should note that their tickets double as full fare Utah Transit Authority passes on buses, TRAX, Frontrunner and UTA On Demand on the day of performances. Keep this in mind for attending shows throughout the 2016-2027 season.