The hair stands up on your arm, chills run down your spine, sweat develops on your brow. You slowly realize you are scared out of your mind. And why? You’re just reading a short story… but it’s not just any short story. This short story is by Edgar Allan Poe, the late, great master of chilling tales involving murder, mystery, and dark tales. Honestly, you would be shocked to see Edgar Allan Poe sitting in a high-backed chair, answering questions about performing his works. But that’s just what happened at My Very Odd Job. Helen McKenna, a female Poe impersonator, put on her Poe face and gave us a morbidly awesome ride into his creepy world. Read on and you will not be disappointed.
Stacey: How did you first become a Poe impersonator?
Helen: I had been performing Poe’s work since I was in high school. When I was 14 years old, I memorized “The Raven.” That was the first Poe thing I did, and I always performed it as a female performing Poe’s stuff. In 1999, I was working at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site and it was the 150 anniversary of Poe’s death. I always wanted to play Poe, but I never even thought it would be a possibility. I decided to portray a woman he was engaged to, Sarah Helen Whitman; I wrote a play about her. It was a one-woman show based on her letters and memoirs and what people had said about them. Basically I did a 20-minute one-woman performance about her. The man I hired to direct was Bruce Curless (the deputy director of the Ritz Theater Co.). He and I had worked together before, so I knew we could collaborate. As he was directing this piece, he remembered I had played Ahab for a play called “Lit Candles”. He knew that I could go into gender bending if I needed to and he said, “How about playing Poe for Halloween? You could be Helen Whitman for Act I and Poe for Act II.” And I was like, “REALLY!?” That was in 1999 when I did this for the first time. I have just been running with it ever since. I really love it.
S: So, why Poe? What drew you to Poe? You said you were 14 when you memorized the Raven. You’ve just always been attracted to his writing?
H: It’s actually kind of odd because the first time I encountered Poe I was 10 years old. It was in Catholic school and the nun read “The Bells.” But she only did the first stanza, which is, you know, “Hear the sledges with the bells!” And it was rhyme, rhyme, rhyme and I just hated it. It was just another one of those goofy poems. I never looked at it again until after I had memorized “The Raven,” and I started thinking, “This guy's pretty weird.” I reread “The Bells” and I loved it! I think it’s crazy… it is crazy. It’s madness set to rhythm. It was definitely the poetry that hooked me with Poe. But why Poe? I think just hanging out with different people and they would say that Poe was a freak and drug addict and all that stuff. I was drawn to the underdog. He was the literary underdog. And it turns out half the stuff I heard was wrong!
S: When is your next Poe performance, as Poe?
