Quoth the raven, nevermore.

When it comes to Edgar Allen Poe’s works, though, perhaps “evermore” would fit better.

Poe Evermore-Showcase of Verse and Story, a production of the NIU School of Theatre and Dance, opens tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Stevens Building Corner Theatre.

The show, which is a showcase of faculty director Stanton Davis’ freshman BFA acting class, is an all new adaptation of Poe’s works, and costs $5.

“It’s a collection of Poe’s short stories and poems, and some songs from the nineteenth century that we put together in collaboration,” Davis said. “The idea is if you go to this play you’re going to the castle in which Prince Prospero from the Masque of the Red Death is having entertainment for his party guests. We have characters from the works come to life and they tell the stories.”

The show will feature 15 student actors in their first performance at NIU.

Davis hopes that the showcase will give students a chance to become accustomed to using more complex language onstage.

“It’s mostly taken from Poe’s words,” Davis said. “What we’ve done is we’ve found characters that it would make sense to say those words occasionally changed the genders, we’ve split the lines up in short stories so several people could tell them, but for the most part it’s actually Poe’s words, his poetry and his short stories.”

The students were largely responsible for the shows creation, which Davis said is one of the things that makes it so interesting.

“They are a very intelligent group of kids,” said Davis. “They’re from all over the country so it’s been interesting to see what each of them brings to the table. We have a lot of music in the show, and we had some dances in the show so some of the students who have had experience with that have put together these nineteenth century dances. It’s been fun to see their interests reveal themselves as we were creating the show.”