Illimitable Dominion marks the third installment in Forgotten Lore’s evolving, literary-inspired, immersive cycle, Evermore. The performance project was first inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s non-fiction prose poem, Eureka, a pseudo-scientific work that illuminates the nature of cosmic and human existence. Indeed, many of Poe’s theories hint at various, legitimate scientific discoveries of the 20th Century.

Published 19 months before Poe’s death in October of 1849, Eureka served as a groundwork from which the Evermore cycle was built, speculating that Edgar Poe did, in fact, unravel the mysteries of life and death in his final years. The first installment of the cycle, “Dissever My Soul” witnesses Poe’s descent into the fictive world of his macabre creations where he rescues his deceased wife, Virginia from the clutches of the Red Death.

Now, “Illimitable Dominion” sees Poe’s discoveries and creations passed to a new author, Charles Dickens. Inspired by the 1842 meeting between the two authors at the United States Hotel in Philadelphia, the show imagines a clandestine bond between the writers that would continue long after Poe's death in 1849. A decade later, Dickens's charmed career is threatened by whispers of scandal and adultery, but a much more sinister shadow looms over the celebrated writer as Poe's macabre fiction bleeds onto the pages of the Dickensian canon.

Though drawn on the lives and collected works of both authors for inspiration, “Illimitable Dominion” relies heavily on specific works for its characters and content. Among these texts are several of Dickens’s most well-known texts: A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist. Lesser known works include the Charles Dickens short stories, “Captain Murderer”, “The Signal-Man”, and “Mr. Testator’s Visitation”. Also central to the production is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”.

(click on any of the titles for full texts of the short stories)