Words Out Loud is putting out a special podcast as part of the Melbourne Spoken Word Festival Online; the festival replaces the Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival, forced online by social distancing requirements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It runs 24 July to 9 August. The Words Out Loud podcast will go live on 30 July. This event will be the audio debut of ‘The Masque of the Red Death’.
‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is an arrangement of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, originally published in 1842. This interactive composition rendition features spoken word performed by Jason Nahrung, with voice recording by Kirstyn McDermott, and music and sound design by Talie Helene. The work holds Poe’s story up as a prism for viewing the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Poe lived through tuberculosis and cholera pandemics, and he experienced great personal bereavements – his story shows us how little has changed, and how science is not as omnipotent as we perhaps thought; the masquerade ball echoes our dysfunctionally danced suppression strategy; issues of classism are as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century; and the ebony clock chiming balefully stands as massive as the ICU ventilator in our collective anxiety.
