In 1970, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a successful novelist, whose Slaughterhouse Five had enjoyed a lengthy run in the New York Times Best Seller List and had been adapted into a successful motion picture, directed by George Roy Hill. Vonnegut believed it might be enjoyable to write a play, and soon he had a producer, a cast, and a director, and he was working on the script that became his first produced play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June. It proved to be a more difficult process than he had first imagined. “There I was…” he later recalled, “My nice manners and neat appearance decayed. I came to resemble a madman who was attempting to extract moonbeams from excrement.”
In his pre-show talk about Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Professor Emeritus John Woodcock will discuss Kurt Vonnegut, his writing, the genesis of the play, and how Vonnegut and his Wanda June resonate in contemporary society.
John Woodcock retired last year from over 30 years service in the Department of English at IU Bloomington. While on the faculty, he taught courses in autobiography, literature and science, creative writing, and writing about the future. He has co-produced a nationally distributed film for the Environmental Defense Fund, written articles for literary journals, and contributed over thirty articles and reviews to the NYU School of Medicine’s online database on Literature, Arts, and Medicine. He is a member of the Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching and the recipient of the Herman Ferederic Lieber Memorial Award for Outstanding Teaching.
This lecture is the fourth in our series of pre-show talks, each presented on the opening day of the plays presented in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center. Prof. Woodcock will present “Moonbeams from Excrement”: A Pre-Show Lecture on Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Happy Birthday, Wanda June at 3:00 PM on Friday, December 3 in the Wells-Metz Theatre. That evening director Scott LeFeber brings Happy Birthday, Wanda June to the stage, where it will run Friday December 3, Saturday December 4 and Monday December 6 through Saturday December 11, all at 8 PM.