Meet our Artist

Join us for evening of Edgar Allen Poe, October 28th 7pm in the Atrium of the Civic Building.

Featuring Tim Hoban

Edgar Allan Poe: The Poet’s Journey

By Bryan Willis

The only thing more intriguing than Edgar Allan Poe’s work was his life. Spend an hour with the master poet, critic and renowned author as he tours and tries to woo subscribers for a new magazine he is desperately trying to get started, The Stylus. A publisher has promised to launch the magazine if Poe can guarantee 1000 readers. Set in an 1849 literary salon, Poe alternates from intimate conversations with his audience to lectures on the state of American literature and the philosophy of composition, to diatribes on his most hated contemporaries, Longfellow and Emerson. And, of course, recites from some of his well-known works. Little does Poe know but in a matter of months, he will be dead.

Tim Hoban transfixes the audience as Edgar Allan Poe, pacing the aisles and reciting from his works. Tim has been performing Poe around the Pacific Northwest for the past year. Tim has performed Poe at schools, and has also toured several other shows in the Puget Sound area. He has been a member of a number of improv groups as well as a sketch comedy group, and can be seen on local television on The Spud Goodman Show. He has numerous industrial videos to his credit and has appeared in a few independent films. But the stage is where he wants to be. He has credits from all the Tacoma theaters, plus Seattle to the north and Olympia to the south. He is very grateful to his family for their patience in his absence; to Bryan Willis for writing this Poe piece; to David Wright for directing it; and to Poe for leaving such a monumental body of work in such a short amount of time.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Poet’s Journey was written by Pacific Northwest playwright Bryan Willis, and premiered in 1998 in the small Northwest town of McCleary, Washington. Bryan is remembered for his critically acclaimed play Sophie, which premiered at the Festival Fringe in 2002. Sophie has since been performed at numerous Washington State locations, and was recently presented on BBC Radio this past spring, as well as in New York as a staged reading. Bryan has studied playwriting in London, New York, and Ohio. His work has been seen in Seattle, Chicago, New York, as well as in numerous locations around the Pacific Northwest.