Edgar Allen Poe visits MAHS
Published: October 28, 2009
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STAFF PHOTO/STACI WILSON Actor David Keltz performed the tales of Edgar Allen Poe at Montrose Area High School on Monday.
A full 200 years after his birth, the macabre tales of Edgar Allen Poe enthrall readers with haunting scenes full of timeless human emotion.
Those scenes were brought to life at Montrose Area High School by the English department on Monday when David Keltz, as Poe, performed two of tales for the high school audience.
In the one-man show, Keltz takes on the persona of Poe - a character he has mastered through not just reading Poe’s fictional works but by also studying Poe’s correspondence, essays about the author and 1800s history.
Keltz performed “The Premature Burial,” at each of the two morning performances and added “The Cask of Amontillado” to the first performance and “The Black Cat” to the second.
Keltz, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, also answered student questions after the performance – some as Poe and some as himself.
One question pointedly asked the character if he suffered from mental illness. Keltz agreed with recent assessments that Poe may have been bi-polar and that he suffered from psychotic episodes often brought on by alcohol.
Another student question asked Poe, “What makes you so great?”
Keltz, again as Poe, said “The road to immortal renown lies before each and every one of you.” Taken from a Poe letter, Keltz advised young writers to write from the heart. “Whatever is personal for you will also be universal as well.”
Keltz said he wanted to be an actor all his life and first read Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” at age 13 and later developed the idea of performing one person shows.
He began portraying Poe on stage on Halloween 1991 with about 20 minutes of the author’s work prepared for the stage. The actor resides in Poe’s hometown of Baltimore. He has traveled the eastern U.S. performing as Poe and even performed the tales in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Keltz now has over five hours of Poe’s work, about nine stories, prepared for the stage.
Keltz also discussed his membership in SAG. He said the union posed a Catch 22 – you can’t get in if you don’t have a job and you can’t usually get an audition of you are not a member. But, he said, the union contracts provided actors with certain protections at work.
Aspiring actors, said Keltz, should attend and watch everything they can and he advocated studying acting, at the masters degree level, at a good school.
For aspiring writers, Keltz advised them to study the authors that deeply inspire them and develop their own style.
The actor says Poe has stayed relevant through the ages because of the way he wrote. “He wrote about real, human phenomena in a scary, fascinating way because it’s within the realm of possibility,” said Keltz. Prior to Poe, many authors wrote about monsters, like vampires.
The atmosphere Poe created in his stories is wonderful, said Keltz.
“Even though they were written long ago, (Poe’s) focus is on effect. He didn’t write about characters doing mundane things. He got into the emotions of people,” Keltz said.
For more information about David Keltz, visit www.davidkeltz.com
