"Playing" Billy Pilgrim

Converting "Slaughterhouse 5"  to a play would be difficult because what makes the story so compelling is Billy's ongoing narrative.A play without this narrative would be short and uneventful. Alternatively, if Billy's narration were included in a play, Billy would constantly have to break the "4th  wall" and speak to the audience. This would not be a new concept in live theater. However, Slaughterhouse 5 has considerably more narrative than dialogue so that if all of  the book's narrative were incorporated in a play,  it may not hold the audience's attention.In addition there are scenes described in the book that would be difficult to depict using stage props. For instance the Dresden bombing or the plane crash cannot be visualized solely with red lights and sound effects, at least not with the same intensity that Vonnegut describes them. Vonnegut wrote the story in such a fashion that the best medium for telling the story is in book format. Slaughterhouse 5 is just too well written to be successfully adapted into any other form of media. If one were to persist in trying to writing a play based on Slaughetrhouse 5, I sincerely believe it would require collaboration with Kurt Vonnegut himself in order for that play to be a successful.

So it goes...