{"id":54,"date":"2022-05-22T22:05:22","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T22:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2022-07-21T18:30:33","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T18:30:33","slug":"an-interview-with-the-creator","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/an-interview-with-the-creator\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview With the Creator"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Todd Wronski<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Kurt Vonnegut<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As rehearsals began for Kurt Vonnegut: My Lives\u2019 Stories<\/em>, Production Stage Manager Brigid McNulty sat down with playwright\/actor Todd Wronski to discuss the creation of this performance piece.\u00a0 Selected portions of the conversation are contained below.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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BM: Why Kurt Vonnegut?<\/p>\n

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TW: Well, any person even generally familiar with Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s work will know the answer to that immediately: his is one of the truly great and most distinctive creative minds of the Twentieth Century.\u00a0 His novels are classics, his short fiction remarkable (and sometimes overlooked,) and his public speaking\u2014about which many are less aware\u2014was prolific and hugely entertaining.\u00a0 In so many ways he created for a new century many of the things that his hero Mark Twain created for an earlier time.<\/p>\n

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BM: Why now?<\/p>\n

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TW: On November 11, 2022 we will mark the centenary of this remarkable writer\u2019s birth.\u00a0 Having previously been involved with worldwide performances to mark the centenary of William Saroyan in 2008, I thought a similar piece of biographical performance might be a way to further contribute to the celebrations memorializing Vonnegut during this special year.<\/p>\n

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BM:\u00a0 What has been the most challenging aspect of putting this play together?<\/p>\n

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TW:\u00a0 Editing!!\u00a0 Having to make the choice of what material would not be able to be included in the final performance piece.\u00a0 There is just so much rich material.\u00a0 At one point I had over 50 stacks of subject-sorted quote-cards spread out over the writing table in my study.\u00a0 Hundreds of quotes\u2014every one of them containing numerous bits of humor, wisdom, commentary or observations.\u00a0 I had to be quite ruthless, and it was difficult.<\/p>\n

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BM:\u00a0 You are both the writer and the single actor of this play. What are some the differences between the researching aspects of this project and the performance of the ultimate piece?<\/p>\n

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TW:\u00a0 There are a lot of differences.\u00a0 The act of discovery in pouring over all of the Vonnegut material was exciting in an emotional and intellectual sense, but I know from my performances with other material that merging with a historical character using only the words and ideas that you know were created by that person, well\u2014it\u2019s actually a performative luxury\u2014to live even for a short time within the words and ideas of genius.\u00a0 There\u2019 nothing quite like it.<\/p>\n

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BM: What are you hoping audiences will take away from Kurt Vonnegut: My Lives\u2019 Stories?<\/em><\/p>\n

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TW: A reminder of what an original mind he possessed.\u00a0 Audiences will be reminded of his brilliance as a writer, but more than anything, I think (and hope) that they will appreciate even more fully just how broad Vonnegut was in his expressiveness.\u00a0 Much of this production is taken from interviews, speeches and letters that many either do not know about or have forgotten about.\u00a0 The breadth of Vonnegut\u2019s expressive humanity is striking, and I hope to share that with audiences.\u00a0 And let\u2019s not forget about the laughs.\u00a0 What an amusing, wise man!<\/p>\n

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              As rehearsals began for Kurt Vonnegut: My Lives\u2019 Stories, Production Stage Manager Brigid McNulty sat down with playwright\/actor Todd Wronski to discuss the creation of this performance piece.\u00a0 Selected portions of the conversation are contained below.   BM: Why Kurt Vonnegut?   TW: Well, any person even generally … Continue reading An Interview With the Creator<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/wronski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}