How does one make the Victorian Dickens tale “A Christmas Carol” even spookier? Add a twist of Edgar Allan Poe, America’s iconic writer of horror and suspense.
That’s the basis of the new play “A Christmas Carol for Edgar Allan Poe,” commissioned by The National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre and written by Zac Pensol. Both are past winners of The International Edgar Allan Poe Festival “Saturday Visiter” Award. Even better, Poe Theater is trying to create opportunities for everyone to see a show, regardless of their means, so they are offering $5 tickets at every performance.
“This innovative new production is destined to be a Baltimore holiday tradition,” said Alex Zavistovich, founder and artistic director of Poe Theatre. “It’s exactly what it sounds like: A mashup of the life of Edgar Allan Poe and the structure of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol.’ The play tells Poe’s story up to the last days of his beloved wife Virginia Clemm – and the lessons he learned about love and happiness one fateful December night.”
The play features a cast of Baltimore-based actors including Jade Greene, Oz Heiligman, Sarah Bella Joyce, Rocky Nunzio, Anthony Parker, Ian Blackwell Rogers, Mallory Shear, and Zavistovich. Mark Kamie directs and Rogers plays present-day Poe.
Zavistovich, who plays Future Edgar, is returning to the stage after a two-year hiatus when he was in Poe Theater’s “Blood, Sweat, and Fears.” Before that, it had been years since he was in a stage play.
“I’ve been acting in general, but always in radio dramas,” Zavistovich told Baltimore Fishbowl. “So, it’s always been script in hand. And this is the first time in well over two years that I’ve actually been on stage. And you know, happily playing a version of Poe. This particular production has three, slash four versions of Poe: Child Edgar, Young Edgar, the Edgar that we all have come to know from the photos, and then this Future Edgar, which is the role that I’m playing.”
The idea for the play began over three years ago at a board meeting, when mulling over the idea of “A Christmas Carol”, they wondered about doing a mashup of Poe’s life told in the narrative structure of “A Christmas Carol”. They selected Pensol to write it but quickly learned it was not easy to bring the production to fruition.
“Last year we did a staged reading of the script that we had at that point, and when we did it in front of other people, a lot of the problem areas and flow came to light,” Zavistovich said. “And so we went back to the author, Zac Pensol, and said, ‘Here’s the feedback that we got.’ And he took it and basically retooled it from the ground up.”
Zavistovich describes Pensol as a Poe scholar of the highest order, going into the finest detail of both Poe’s life and the structure of “A Christmas Carol”. Ultimately, the focus of the play dual-sided: what audiences know about Poe (his life was filled with tragedy, the deaths of loved ones, and professional failures) and what audiences know about “A Christmas Carol” (Scrooge is visited by three spirits who show him the error of his ways, and he repents on Christmas morning.)
“The hope is that it’s going to be successful enough where this could become a new Baltimore holiday tradition,” Zavistovich said. “I’d love to have a seasonal offering. This thing that that’s uniquely our own.”
“A Christmas Carol for Edgar Allan Poe” debuts at Motor House Theatre on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. It will run for 12 performances over three weekends, with the final performance taking place on Sunday, Dec. 21 at 2 p.m.
Motor House Theatre is located at 120 W. North Ave., Baltimore, MD.
Tickets are available on The National Edgar Allan Poe Theater website and at this link.
