Summoners Ensemble Theatre has announced its first-ever full season of productions at the landmark 1832 Merchant’s House Museum (29 E. 4th St, Manhattan), bringing together three of the company’s most popular and distinctive theatrical experiences between November 2026 and June 2027.
The season begins with the 14th holiday production of A Christmas Carol at the Merchant’s House(November 24, 2026 – January 3, 2027); continues with the return of Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe: Séance at the Merchant’s House (March 30 – April 18, 2027), featuring new stories added to the production; and concludes with the return of Whitman in Love (June 1 – June 13, 2027), a celebration of Walt Whitman, poetry, love, and desire.
For the first time, audiences can subscribe to experience all three productions throughout the season and enjoy savings of up to 20%. Season tickets and individual tickets can be purchased now at www.summonersensemble.org and www.merchantshouse.org.
“After more than a decade of creating theater at the Merchant’s House, it feels wonderfully appropriate to announce a season,” said Dr. Rhonda Dodd, Artistic Director of Summoners Ensemble Theatre. “These three productions are very different, but they share the same essential idea: bringing extraordinary writers and their words into an extraordinary historic space and allowing audiences to encounter them in an intimate, immediate way. We are thrilled to invite our audiences to join us for the whole journey.”
The Merchant’s House Museum, built in 1832, is New York City’s only 19th-century family home preserved virtually intact, with original family furnishings and personal belongings. A National Historic Landmark and one of New York City’s rare landmarks designated for both its exterior and interior, the House provides an extraordinary setting for Summoners Ensemble Theatre’s intimate theatrical productions.
The 14th Holiday Season of
A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT THE MERCHANT’S HOUSE
November 24, 2026 – January 3, 2027
It’s December 1867 and Charles Dickens has arrived in New York City for a month of sold-out performances of his beloved holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. Be transfixed as Mr. Dickens tells his timeless Christmas tale in the elegant intact Greek Revival parlor of the landmark 1832 Merchant’s House Museum.
For its 14th season, A Christmas Carol at the Merchant’s House returns to the elegant Greek Revival double parlor of the Merchant’s House Museum, surrounded by 19th-century holiday decorations, flickering candles, and richly appointed period furnishings.
The 70-minute performance is created from Dickens’ own script and transports audiences back 150 years to encounter the author himself telling his timeless Christmas tale.
Vince Gatton returns to share the role of Mr. Dickens with John Kevin Jones, who originated the role for Summoners Ensemble’s production. The two actors alternate performances, offering audiences two distinctive encounters with Dickens and his beloved characters.
A Christmas Carol at the Merchant’s House is adapted by John Kevin Jones and Rhonda Dodd from Charles Dickens’ classic tale and directed by Rhonda Dodd.
KILLING AN EVENING WITH Edgar Allan Poe: SEANCE AT THE MERCHANT’S HOUSE
March 30 – April 18, 2027
Poe has even more to say this season! Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe introduces two new tales of terror, “The Black Cat” and “The Devil in the Belfry.” The production will alternate these two stories with “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Angel of the Odd” expanding Poe’s dark and macabre world while retaining “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven” at all performances.
The haunting one-man production featuring John Kevin Jones debuted to great acclaim in 2018 and has become a returning favorite of Summoners Ensemble audiences.
In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe lived just blocks from the Merchant’s House, on Amity Street (now West 3rd Street). That same year, the publication of “The Raven” brought him instant fame and invitations to New York’s most fashionable literary salons. Join our séance as John Kevin Jones is inhabited by Edgar Allan Poe for an evening of irrational revenge, obsession, premeditated murder, dismemberment, and the very, very dark.
WHITMAN IN LOVE
June 1, 2027 – June 13, 2027
Walt Whitman returns to the Merchant’s House in Whitman in Love, written and performed by John Kevin Jones.
American journalist, essayist, and pioneering poet Walt Whitman took nightly refuge at Pfaff’s beer cellar just blocks from the Merchant’s House on Broadway at Bleecker Street, a bohemian gathering place where he found community, inspiration, and the human intimacy that shaped his work. In the Museum’s jewel-box garden audiences will encounter the deeply personal love poetry of Walt Whitman in an idyllic theatrical setting that brings them face-to-face with one of the most powerful and revealing strands of his work.
Whitman in Love draws from the poet’s “Live Oak, with Moss” — a sequence of poems composed in the 1850s and widely recognized as among the earliest sustained expressions of same-sex love in American literature. Later camouflaged in the Calamus section of Leaves of Grass, the poems trace an emotional arc of desire, tenderness, heartbreak, and resilience. Whitman in Love places these verses in conversation with contemporary voices and personal relationships that shaped Whitman’s inner life and artistic imagination. The result is a theatrical portrait of the poet not as a monument, but as a man: yearning, beloved, vulnerable, and transformed by love.
ABOUT SUMMONERS ENSEMBLE THEATRE
Founded by a group of actors who studied together at Circle in the Square Theatre School’s Professional Acting Training program, Summoners Ensemble joined the ranks of New York theatre companies in 1993. Created as a collaborative to allow the members to share in all of the functions needed in running a theatre company, Summoners remains a collective effort as we jointly produce theatrical events with other nonprofits or as we find ourselves acting and directing, writing and producing. Summoners is now in its 14th season in residence at the Merchant’s House Museum.
