A special talk back featuring Richard Clark, the Composer, Conductor and longtime friend of Kurt Vonneget will be held after the Saturday, April 28th 2:00 p.m. matinee of Wheelhouse Theater's revival of Happy Birthday, Wanda June at the Gene Frankel Theater, 24 Bond Street. Following the performance, Mr. Clark will take part in a talk-back where he will speak about his friendship with Mr. Vonnegut as well as his experience collaborating on the opera of Happy Birthday, Wanda June.
Composer, conductor, violinist, and violist Richard Auldon Clark is Artistic Director and Conductor of the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Manhattan Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and the Finger Lakes Chamber Music Festival. A strong proponent of American music, Mr. Clark has performed and/or recorded hundreds of world premiers, and his work has received extraordinary praise in the New York Times, Fanfare, American Record Guide, Washington Post, and dozens of others. With more than twenty chamber works to his credit, Mr. Clark has premiered six new compositions in the past three years at Zankel Hall at
Carnegie Hall, and in September 2016, his opera Happy Birthday, Wanda June with a Libretto by
Kurt Vonnegut was premiered by Indianapolis Opera. Currently, Mr. Clark is Professor of Music at Butler University where conducts the Butler Symphony Orchestra and Butler Ballet.
Jeffrey Wise directs the production that will run through Saturday, April 28th The official opening is set for Saturday, April 14th at 7PM. Ticket prices are $25 for rear seating ($20 during previews), $40 for standard seating ($30 during previews) and $55 for premium seating ($45 during previews) and can be purchased online at
https://wandajune.brownpapertickets.com
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE takes a searing and darkly comedic look at American culture through the brilliantly perverse lens of
Kurt Vonnegut. After being presumed dead for eight years, respected war veteran and big game hunter, Harold Ryan, returns home and brings with him an old way of thinking, celebrating a Hemingway-esque machismo and American exceptionalism. Harold soon discovers that the society he returns to has made attempts to progress into a more modern, enlightened cultural narrative. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is a dynamic and often hilarious meditation on toxic masculinity and a capitalistic America's failed attempts at progress cloaked in honor and morality. Simply put, and as the first few lines of the play state, this is a play about men who enjoy killing, and those who don't.
According to Director Jeffrey Wise, "Harold Ryan, the play's protagonist, represents much more than just an overly masculine male energy. He represents a capitalist culture, where "progress" is measured in a linear fashion, based on a certain level of calculable progress and growth. Harold's behavior, and treatment of virtually anyone he comes in contact with, is a sickness that so insidiously spreads among our culture, and we see it today, more potent than ever, some 48 years after this play was penned. It's a toxic celebration of death, destruction and domination cloaked in "heroism" and "American democratic values."
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE first premiered off-Broadway at the Theater de Lys (now the
Lucille Lortel) on October 7, 1970, was restaged at the Edison Theatre on Broadway, starring
Marsha Mason and
Kevin McCarthy and opened December 22, 1970.
The cast of HAPPY BIRTHDAY WANDA JUNE features
Jason O'Connell (Sense & Sensibility - Bedlam, Pride and Prejudice -
Primary Stages, The Dork Knight - Abingdon Theatre Company),
Kate MacCluggage (Ironbound - Kitchen Theatre Company),
Finn Faulconer (Finding Neverland - 1st National Tour),
Craig Wesley Divino (Founder Faultline Theater, Hound of the Baskervilles - Arrow Rock Lyceum, Noises Off - Chautauqua Theatre Co.),
Kareem Lucas (Sole Variations, Walden: Life in the Woods),
Matt Harrington (Matilda - Broadway, 1st National Tour, Twelfth Night, Richard III (Shakespeare's Globe) Harvey (
Roundabout Theatre Company), and
Charlotte Wise as Wanda June.
Scenic Design is by Brittany Vasta, Lighting Design is by Andrew Florida, Costume Design is by
Christopher Metzger, Sound Design is by Mark Van Hare. The Production Stage Manager is
Tim Love, Press Representative is
Daniel DeMello / DDPR and General Management is by
Visceral Entertainment -
Michael Chase Gosselin,
Tim Sulka (Off-Broadway - Endangered!, Money Talks, Regional - Midnight at The Never Get). Additional Casting by
Greg Uliasz, CSA (The Lighting Thief, Sweetee, Endangered!) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is considered one of the most influential American novelists of the 20th Century and is best known for the novels Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions. Vonnegut's first play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June, had him named Most Promising Playwright. When asked about the origin of the idea for Wanda June, Vonnegut has written: "I once led a Great Books Study Group on Cape Cod and we read and discussed Homer's Odyssey. I found the behavior of Odysseus after arriving home unexpectedly from the Trojan War hilariously pig-headed and somehow Hemingway-esque. And then I remembered the blowhard father of a girl I dated in high school, who had heard of huge rubies to be found in the Amazon Rain Forest, and wanted to quit his job and go look for them. The rest is history."
Jeff Wise (Artistic Director, Founding Company Member) is an actor, director, producer and founder of Wheelhouse Theater Company. For Wheelhouse, Jeff has directed Ibsens' An Enemy of the People, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar and the world premiere of DANNYKRISDONNAVERONICA by
Lawrence Dial. He co-produced the critically acclaimed world premiere In the Room with Slant Theatre Project. Jeff also produced the critically acclaimed revival of Once on this Island on Broadway. In NYC he has directed productions of Henry IV Part 2, Hamlet, BACK, and Dear Penthouse. Stage credits include Hamlet, Lend me a Tenor, Pajama Game, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, BACK, Three Sisters, Six Degrees of Separation, Bus Stop, and La Ronde. Jeff received his MFA in Acting from New York University.
Performances are on Saturday, April 7th at 7pm; Tuesday, April 10th at 7pm; Wednesday, April 11th at 7pm; Thursday, April 12th at 7pm; Friday, April 13th at 2pm.; Sunday, April 15th at 3pm; Wednesday, April 18th at 7pm; Thursday, April 19th at 7pm; Friday, April 20th at 7pm; Saturday, April 21st at 7pm; Sunday, April 22nd at 3pm; Monday, April 23rd at 7pm; Thursday, April 26th at 7pm; Friday, April 27th at 7pm; Saturday, April 28th at 2pm; Saturday, April 28th at 7pm.
