David Lindquist

david.lindquist@indystar.com

As a friend of Kurt Vonnegut, Butler University music professor Richard Auldon Clark knew to expect coffee or scotch when meeting with the iconic author at his Manhattan brownstone.

But Vonnegut had something else in hand when entering his living room on one of Clark's visits a year or so after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: a copy of the first play written by the author known for novels based on time travel and doomsday devices.

"You're the person to write this as an opera," Vonnegut told Clark.

So began an unlikely new life for anti-war story "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," which closed short of 100 performances on Broadway in the winter of 1971 and flopped as a film later that year.

Clark loved working with Vonnegut on musical projects, but a "Wanda June" opera wouldn't be easy.

The first-time opera composer needed to expand his skill set to include long-winded arias, even as Vonnegut imposed restrictions on what words could be used.

Famous operas dwell on high-society drama. "Wanda June" is a dark comedy influenced by the Vietnam War.

Vonnegut tinkered with the ending of "Wanda June" across decades. When the author died in 2007, the project came to a halt.

But thanks to Indiana's bicentennial and Clark devoting a sabbatical to jump-start the job, Vonnegut's wish is coming to life. The "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" opera will makes its world premiere this weekend at Butler's Schrott Center for the Arts. Performances are scheduled Sept. 16-18.

Clark's journey to bring this "Wanda June" to the stage involved years of editing text, opening up to unlikely musical ideas and embracing the flawed, fantastic characters Vonnegut created.

A new approach

The collaborators first met in the early 1990s, long after Vonnegut moved away from his hometown of Indianapolis and about a decade before Butler University hired Clark.

Their friendship made sense, considering Vonnegut's passion for creativity. "Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow," the author famously said.

Clark, founder of the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, became Vonnegut's insider in the world of classical music. He connected the Shortridge High School alum with composers who would write music to accompany Vonnegut's reading of book excerpts. Clark's group performed on recordings of "Breakfast of Champions," "Mother Night" and "Ice-9 Ballads" (from "Cat's Cradle").

The concept of a "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" opera didn't come as a complete surprise to Clark. Another composer declined to tackle the project a few years before Vonnegut resurrected the idea. Vonnegut balked at that composer's suggestion of ripping apart the story and starting from scratch, Clark said.

The story of "Wanda June" — a tale of a sexist soldier and hunter, his liberated wife and the pre-teen title character who has little connection to the couple but addresses the audience from her new digs in heaven — continued to captivate Vonnegut even if theatrical and Hollywood presentations failed to meet his expectations.

One of the primary problems, Clark said, focused on showing the bad side of male lead character Harold Ryan. Killing people and animals around the globe is Ryan's pastime, and he is returning to his wife, Penelope, after being presumed to be dead himself for nearly a decade.

"I don't think people see how truly rotten this guy is," is how Clark recounts Vonnegut's misgivings about "Happy Birthday, Wanda June."

Here's where music arrives as a script doctor, Clark said. It can illuminate the true nature of characters: "I can solve that with a bassoon. I can solve that with a bit of percussion."

Still, an opera didn't initially strike Clark as the go-to resolution for Vonnegut. A night at the opera can be a regal affair, and Vonnegut is the guy who once said, "I tell you, we are here on earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

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For the people

Trying "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" as a musical rather than an opera might have been an easier route.

But Vonnegut didn't have a great track record with musicals. A 1979 off-Broadway production of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," lasted only 49 performances.

And in their living-room conversations, Clark and Vonnegut weren't always wild about the Great White Way.

"We certainly trashed a lot of musicals, but he never trashed the operas," Clark said.

When devising their plan for "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," Vonnegut and Clark aimed for accessibility.

Vonnegut advised making one male character a tenor (because he is the opposite of Ryan's he-man persona) and another a bass (because he is a "bumbling idiot").

The author hoped to steer clear of one operatic cliche he referred to as "screech owls."

"He didn't want Penelope to have too high of stuff so she'd just be warbling and hard to understand," Clark said. "He constantly told me, 'The words are important. The story is the most important.' "

Penelope's opening statement in "Wanda June" is, "This is a simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing — and those who don't."

To accompany the plot's dark comedy, Clark didn't restrict himself to traditional sounds associated with Italian, French or German opera.

Specific segments are inspired by late-1960s sitcom music, as well as jazz you would hear at a beat-poetry spot in Greenwich Village.

"When I read a Kurt Vonnegut novel, I feel like I'm juxtaposed across all time," Clark said. "I wanted to have a hint of that musically."

Cast members, however, won't sing about things that happened after 1971. No references to Sept. 11 or Donald Trump's presidential bid. Clark was given no wiggle room in terms of storytelling.

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The Vonnegut rules

The credits for "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," the first world-premiere production in the 41-year history of the Indianapolis Opera company, read, "Composed by Richard Auldon Clark; Libretto by Kurt Vonnegut."

All words are Vonnegut's, but the opera is not a verbatim adaptation of the original play.

Clark said witty comments and comebacks in dialogue aren't particularly helpful in an opera. The idea, he said, is to give singers enough space to flow when advancing the plot. It's a quandary Clark took to Vonnegut.

“He said, ‘Well, you can’t change a thing, but we can cut stuff,’” Clark said.

Despite this intimidating edict from an author often compared to Mark Twain, Clark worked on trimming lines. For several years.

“He was pretty cool (about it),” Clark said. “I thought he’d kill me.”

To Clark's advantage, "Wanda June's" nonlinear storytelling could survive judicious edits.

The story hops in time and dimension from an urban apartment to a Nazi general holding court in heaven.

"In scene five, Harold Ryan is a young man picking up Penelope as a ditsy little carhop," Clark said.

Bob Weide, a friend of Vonnegut who is working on a documentary film about the author, directed a theatrical production of "Wanda June" in Los Angeles in 2001.

Weide isn't the composer who declined to take a stab at an operatic adaptation, but he understands that perspective.

“One wonders if the most practical way to do this would have been to really start from scratch with an opera in mind,” Weide said. “But Kurt was always one for making those leaps of faith and then figuring it out later. It does seem to fit into his approach of doing things.”

Part of the legacy of "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" is Vonnegut's habit of writing new endings to the story. A 1970 issue of Life magazine reported that Vonnegut supplied at least three different conclusions leading up to opening night. The director of a 2016 stage production in Anchorage, Alaska, told a public-radio station he chose one ending out of five options.

Weide, who has directed 27 episodes of HBO sitcom "Curb Your Enthusiasm," said Vonnegut faxed more than one new ending for the 2001 production in Los Angeles.

“It made me realize the difference between a book and a play is that once you write a book and you hand it in to the publishers and it’s printed and on the shelf, that’s the end of it,” Weide said. “But a play is a living, breathing thing that continues to go on and have many lives. As a playwright, you have a chance to go back and fix it every time it’s being produced again."

Clark said he has a one-of-a-kind ending for the opera. Vonnegut delivered it on Feb. 14, 2007, Valentine's Day, shortly before the process to make "Wanda June" an opera became stuck in time.

Delayed action

The author of "Slaughterhouse-Five" died on April 11, 2007, at 84. In Indianapolis, already planned "Year of Vonnegut" celebrations were altered. Instead of Vonnegut speaking at Clowes Hall, his son, Mark, delivered Kurt's final speech to a packed house.

Vonnegut never heard a note of music Clark wrote for "Happy Birthday, Wanda June." Although the libretto was newly complete in 2007, Clark didn't dive into the task of composing the music. Other priorities filled his plate.

"It's really easy, in the course of a school year, to make excuses: I have these concerts; I have my students; I'm doing this radio broadcast; I'm writing this piece for Carnegie Hall," Butler's director of orchestral studies said.

One school year snowballed into seven. Seven years of procrastinating was enough.

"I thought, 'You're either going to do it, or you're not going to do it," Clark said.

To fire up "Happy Birthday, Wanda June," he returned to his hometown of Apalachin, N.Y., a community of 1,000 residents 90 miles south of Syracuse, for a teaching sabbatical that began on Jan. 1, 2014. Thanks to a winter devoted to composing and exercise, Clark came back to Indianapolis with a completed first act and 55 fewer pounds on his frame.

Clark wrapped up orchestration on Feb. 14, 2016, exactly nine years after Vonnegut's final "Wanda June" contribution.

Indianapolis Opera signed on to produce the work as a celebration of native son Vonnegut during the state's bicentennial.

"It was such an emotional trip when I finished it," Clark said. "I adored him so much. Kurt Vonnegut was the first person I read who made it seem OK to question everything and say, 'Maybe I'm not just a freak because I don't fit into these things.' All his characters are freaks and they don't fit into anything. It's great. God bless him for it. It changed my life."

"Happy Birthday, Wanda June"

>> WHEN: 8 p.m. Sept. 16, 7:30 p.m. Sept. 17 and 2:30 p.m. Sept. 18.

>> WHERE: Schrott Center for the Arts, Butler University, 610 W 46th St.

>> TICKETS: $10 to $75.

>> INFO: Visit IndyOpera.org or call (317) 283-3531.

Call Star reporter David Lindquist at (317) 444-6404. Follow him on Twitter: @317Lindquist.