Edgar Allan Poe Comes Back to Life, One Improvised Nightmare at a Time

Unexpected Productions presents Poe Unexpected: Edgar Allan Poe Improvised, a fully improvised journey into the strange, sinister, and darkly funny world of one of America’s most iconic writers. The show runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., October 2 through October 31, at Unexpected Productions, 1428 Post Alley at the Gum Wall in Pike Place Market.

Each performance draws inspiration from Poe’s stories, poems, themes, rhythms, and famously unreliable narrators, but the performers do not recreate The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Raven, or any other existing Poe work. Instead, they create entirely new gothic stories from audience suggestions and true experiences.

The show began when director Jay Hitt was working at Black Box Theatre in Lynnwood and was approached with the idea of developing a Poe-inspired improv production.

“I started reading Poe’s stories and poems and asking myself what made them feel like Poe,” said Hitt. “Rather than simply improvising versions of his stories, I wanted to find a way for the performers to enter the world of his writing and create something completely new.”

The company prepares by studying Poe’s work together and then using improvisational exercises to explore his characters, language, obsessions, atmosphere, and point of view.

Among the most useful elements are Poe’s unreliable narrators, characters who insist they are perfectly rational even as their stories reveal something very different.

“We sometimes go into a scene with a mantra rather than a structure,” explained Hitt from Unexpected Productions Market Theater in Pike Place Market. “It might be, ‘It wasn’t my fault. You made me do that terrible thing,’ or, ‘You think I’m insane? Would an insane person have been clever enough to do this?’ That immediately puts the improvisers into a very Poe-like way of seeing the world.”

Audience members provide much of the raw material.

Rather than asking simply for a location or an object, the performers may ask for a real regret, a betrayal, or a time someone did them wrong. Those personal experiences become the seeds of the evening’s stories.

“The stories people give us are amazing,” said Hitt, They can be strange, funny, disturbing, or completely bizarre, but they come from something that actually happened. That truth gives the improvisers somewhere powerful to begin.”

One memorable audience member told the company about a childhood trip his father supposedly took him and several friends on to Chuck E. Cheese. When they arrived, the building had apparently burned down, leaving the children devastated. Years later, the son discovered the truth: his father had simply driven them to an abandoned, burned-out warehouse and convinced them it had once been Chuck E. Cheese.

Stories like that can quickly feel at home in Poe’s universe.

The theatrical atmosphere begins before the first improvised story. Performers emerge in silhouette against a midnight-blue background, using movement, chanting, and scene painting to create the world. Then Edgar Allan Poe himself appears, portrayed by longtime Unexpected Productions performer and Artistic Director Tony Beeman. Beeman’s portrayal of Poe remains a consistent element from performance to performance.

“By the time Poe enters with that ominous walk and presence, the audience has already been pulled into the world,” explained Hitt.  “From there, they get to watch the performers discover the rest of it right along with them.”

“The stories people give us are amazing,” said Hitt, They can be strange, funny, disturbing, or completely bizarre, but they come from something that actually happened. That truth gives the improvisers somewhere powerful to begin.”

One memorable audience member told the company about a childhood trip his father supposedly took him and several friends on to Chuck E. Cheese. When they arrived, the building had apparently burned down, leaving the children devastated. Years later, the son discovered the truth: his father had simply driven them to an abandoned, burned-out warehouse and convinced them it had once been Chuck E. Cheese.

Stories like that can quickly feel at home in Poe’s universe.

The theatrical atmosphere begins before the first improvised story. Performers emerge in silhouette against a midnight-blue background, using movement, chanting, and scene painting to create the world. Then Edgar Allan Poe himself appears, portrayed by longtime Unexpected Productions performer and Artistic Director Tony Beeman. Beeman’s portrayal of Poe remains a consistent element from performance to performance.

“By the time Poe enters with that ominous walk and presence, the audience has already been pulled into the world,” explained Hitt.  “From there, they get to watch the performers discover the rest of it right along with them.”

Despite the darkness, Poe Unexpected is also very funny, although the cast is not approaching the material as a parody.

“Good improvisers don’t have to push for jokes,” explained Hitt.  “The comedy comes naturally from people committing completely to these characters and situations. The audience can laugh one moment and then gasp the next because the performers remain authentic to the world we’ve created.”

For Hitt, that commitment to theatrical storytelling is part of what separates Poe Unexpected from a conventional improv comedy show.

“What I love about Poe Unexpected is that the improv serves the world of the show,” said Hitt. “You’re still watching performers create everything in the moment, but they’re also building atmosphere, characters, suspense, language, and a complete theatrical experience. The audience isn’t just giving us suggestions. Their own stories become part of this strange new Poe universe that exists for one night and then disappears.”

Poe’s The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heart provide particularly rich inspiration for the cast, while The Raven influences a segment involving improvised poetry and Poe’s distinctive use of rhythm.

Creating those stories requires the fundamentals Unexpected Productions has emphasized throughout its more than four decades of improvisational theater: careful watching and listening, physical commitment, association, justification, reincorporation, and ensemble storytelling.

And because everything is improvised, no two performances can ever be repeated.

One tradition does remain: near the end of the evening, Poe brings together elements from the stories the audience and performers have created and turns them into a final improvised rhyming poem by the narrator.

“Watching everything from the evening suddenly come back together in that final poem blows people’s minds,” Hitt concluded. “We know the world we’re entering when the show begins. We have no idea what stories we’re going to find once we get there.”

Poe Unexpected: Edgar Allan Poe Improvised

October 2–31, 2026

Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.

Unexpected Productions

1428 Post Alley

Pike Place Market, Seattle

Tickets: $12–$20

Tickets and information:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1982202036651