The Fall spooky season is always a great time to revisit the macabre stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and this October the Penny Seats Theatre Company brings to life a stage adaptation of one of the author's most haunting tales.

Based loosely on The Fall of the House of Usher, Michigan playwright John Sousanis's Usher finds the last two heirs of a once-great family reunited with an old friend within their crumbling mansion. Penny Seats' production is directed by company Artistic Director Julia Garlotte, and stars Brittany Batell as Madeline Usher, David Collins as Roderick Usher, and Jonathan Davidson as the unnamed Visitor.

This year marks Garlotte's first season as artistic director of Penny Seats, though she has previously worked with the company as an actor and sound designer. Staging Usher, as with the other Penny Seats performances for 2024, was selected by previous artistic director Joseph Zettelmaier, though Garlotte was in conversation with him throughout the decision-making process. "We both decided that it would be a cool addition to the season," Garlotte says. Zettelmaier had seen Usher during its original run in 2007, and Michigan playwright John Sousanis rewrote the script for Penny Seats. 

"We had some stuff we wanted fleshed out and questions answered," Garlotte says, "and he was willing to take another stab at it. So we have a really great script."

As to what appeals to her about Usher, Garlotte says she is "always a sucker for drama and tragedy, which is a strange thing to say when sometimes the state of the world calls for something a little more light-hearted."

The play finds twins Madeline and Roderick Usher welcoming a mysterious Visitor into their cursed family home, but there are alterations from Poe's version of Usher.

"One of the biggest differences is that Madeline largely does not exist in the original story," Garlotte says. "She's mentioned and then shows up at the end—not to spoil anything—tragically. In this play, John has created this really wonderful character of Madeline that just doesn't exist in that original story. To give her a face and a voice and a personality and a story of her own is wonderful.

"I love the connection and the conflict between the twins, this idea of twins having an almost supernatural connection," Garlotte adds. "Even in real life, that's a thing that happens. That has always fascinated me."

Even with Sousanis's newly revised script, Garlotte notes there is still a lot of room for interpretation. "There's been a lot of questions, a lot of stuff we've had to figure out in rehearsals, because Poe's writing is famously vague," she says. "There's just a lot of questions, and we just have to decide for ourselves a lot of time. But there's a really complicated love story between the three of them that leads to the very unfortunate ending. 

"Spoiler, the house does fall."

The cast of Usher is comprised of David Collins as Roderick, Brittany Batell as Madeline, and Jonathan Davidson as the Visitor. "They are all three just incredible actors," Garlotte says. She has previously directed Batell and Davidson in Penny Seats' production of The Man Beast, and this will be her first time working with Collins. 

"They make amazing, strong choices. They work together extremely well," Garlotte continues. "I would believe that Brittany and David were twins in this world. They look just enough alike, I think, that it is believable. But just the dynamic between them, I believe that they're siblings arguing on stage." The director adds that Collins' Roderick will play classical guitar during the performance, playing music the actor composed. "I always love when you can get a live musician in."

Sound designer Joseph Caradonna sets the mood for Usher with the ambiance of the house itself, what Garlotte describes as "the groans and the creeks of this old, old mansion, and you're not quite sure if that's the house or the wind or spirits." 

This, she said, contributes to the director's sense of the house as a fourth character. "It contains the spirits of every Usher who's ever lived there," Garlotte says. "There's this whole question of this house curse—how real is it?—and how supernatural is anything that's happening in this play. And so the house was always really important that it had some life to it."

Set designer Aedan Munger and set builder Ray Buchalter chose to embody the house in hanging canvas walls, which will subtly move and ripple throughout the production. "I can't wait to see how it actually works once we get them hung up," Garlotte says. "I'm looking forward to the fact that the walls are always going to be moving a little bit because the house is alive, or alive/dead, depending on how you want to look at it."

The hanging canvas wall fulfills another purpose, as Usher is staged in the shared workspace of Cahoots Event Space and so the set needs to be struck between performances. "This is a set we can hang and then just unzip, take it down, which will be really great," Garlotte says. "That was very creative on Aedan's part."

This will be Penny Seats' second production at Cahoots, following Beehive in August. While any space presents its challenges, Garlotte is already enjoying the partnership. "We love that it's downtown, and our audiences for our summer show really seem to love that as well," she says.

And because this is Cahoots' first experience of hosting a theater company, Penny Seats has opportunities to set precedents for how the space can be used for performance—and both organizations are learning as they go. "We're transforming it in a way that it hasn't been before," Garlotte says. "It's been a learning curve. Every time you get into a new space, you just have to discover all of the perks and limitations. But we're making it work for us."

The early 19th century period costumes for Roderick, Madeline, and the Visitor are designed by Josie Eli Herman. "This show is right in her wheelhouse," Garlotte says. The twins' confinement to the house means a minimum of costume changes—"they're in their house clothes, they're not dressing to go out," Garlotte explains—but the Visitor, as a "world traveler and adventurer," will have more distinctive dress.

Not all of the pieces have been finalized, but Garlotte is eager to see everything fit into place. "We've really constructed a great design team, and I can't wait to see what they come up with."

Shaun Manning is a founder and former co-owner of Booksweet. He is also a writer of various things, mostly comics.

"Usher," by John Sousanis and directed by Juila Garlotte, opens October 10-26 at Cahoots, 206 East Huron Street, Ann Arbor. For tickets and additional information, visit pennyseats.org.