Who could resist a theatrical event that employs “smell design”?

That’s one of the more unusual elements employed for the Blackbird Theatre’s new, original, radio-show-style show based on the short life of poet Arthur Rimbaud: “Je est un Autre (I is another).”

Using sources like letters, poems, and court documents as a basis, the hour-long play is the product of Blackbird Theatre founder Barton Bund, actress Sara Wolf Molnar (who plays Rimbaud), and local novelist Kathe Koja.

The Blackbird will record the show being performed by actors live, with little to no staging, in front of an audience, with sound effects, and the show will then be made available on the Blackbird Theatre’s website, as well as EncoreMichigan.com.

“We’ve been wanting to experiment with potential multimedia aspects,” said Bund. “A play is not an available-on-demand thing, so we wanted to expand the scope of what we do, and reach out to people who maybe can’t come out to our shows.”

Rimbaud, whose poetry is now widely celebrated, wrote only during a very brief time of his life, and had a short, torrid affair with Paul Verlaine. After that, he traveled the world — often leaving destruction in his wake by trashing hotel rooms and destroying or selling others’ property — working as a gun trader, doctor, teacher, and more before dying of cancer at age 37.

“In every generation, someone comes along and just blows up convention, and in (19th) century Paris, (Rimbaud)’s the one who turned everything upside down,” said Bund. “He didn’t just want to change literature. He wanted to change the world and turn it upside down, starting with his own identity. … In a letter to one of his old teachers, he talked about throwing away his old self, saying ‘I is another.’ He knew he was bastardizing grammar, but it was this brilliant, inspiring idea, and really honest of him to say, ‘I don’t know who I am, but I’m something other than who you think I am.’”

Those who check out the show should expect to hear Rimbaud’s work in the original French, which will then be translated by the few people in the poet’s inner circle.

“There’s a power in the words that you can’t deny, and they’re best heard in the original language,” said Bund. “The sound of his poetry is so important, and this is something you can do in an audio drama, but it’s not so easy to do in a conventional play. You’d have to come up with visuals to accompany the poetry. So we decided that if we really want to focus on the words, (a radio drama) is one way we could do that.”

This form also offered itself up as a kind of shortcut, since the project just started taking shape this past fall.

But what about those smells that will be incorporated into the show, for those attending in person?

“Some smells are nice, like absinthe, but some are not nice, like rubbing alcohol and … mildew.”

One of the less-than-appealing smells will be the Blackbird’s olfactory approximation of Rimbaud’s coat.

“People talk of it being like a rat’s nest,” said Bund. “He was a filthy animal. … He was willing to degrade himself because he wanted to upend society, and be exactly what society didn’t want him to be.”