"Who Am I This Time?"

is a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961. The story was collected in Vonnegut's famous anthology Welcome To The Monkey House.

Synopsis

The story centers on a character named Harry Nash, who is an extremely shy and characterless small-town man, he works in Miller’s hardware store. However, whenever he takes a part in the local, amateur theater production he becomes the character to an overwhelming extent. Soon Helene Shaw is a recent addition to the town, and she access to participate in the A Streetcar Named Desire play audition and there she falls in love with Harry Nash or with his character in the play, because Harry is a person on the stage and other completely different after the play or rehearsal ends. Then she will have to figure out how to defeat the Harry’s shyness?

Characters

Harry Nash works in hardware store and he is the only real actor the club making the play has, but is really shy out the stage.

Helene Shaw works in the phone company, she is new in town and she falls deeply in love with Harry, not knowing what the real man is like.

Doris Sawyer who always directs the play but not this time to do A Streetcar Named Desire because she had to take care of her mother.

The Director of the Spring Play, A Streetcar Named Desire, he will do all possible things to Harry and Helene act in the play.

Lydia Miller is the the wife of Verne Miller, who is the owner of the hardware store where Harry works. She is Blanche in the play and she she will lay bare Harry's feelings with Helene.

Adaptations

• The short story was made in a short television movie in 1982 starring Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon and directed by Jonathan Demme.

• In 2008 it was adapted into a radio play for BBC Radio 4 starring Lou Hirsch, Kerry Shale, Joanne Froggatt and Maureen Lipman.

Others Kurt Vonnegut's Novels or Stories

	Mother Night is a novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1961. The title of the book is taken from Goethe's Faust. It is the fictional story of Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American, who moved to Germany directly after World War I and then later became alternately a well-known German language playwright and a Nazi propagandist. The action of the novel is narrated (through the use of metafiction) by Campbell himself. The premise is that he is writing his memoirs while awaiting trial for war crimes in an Israeli prison. Howard W. Campbell also appears briefly in Vonnegut's later novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
	God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine is a novel written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and published in 1965. The plot focuses on Eliot Rosewater, the primary trustee of the philanthropic Rosewater Foundation whom one of the family lawyers, Norman Mushari, is attempting to have declared insane to enable a more distant relative, Fred Rosewater, an insurance salesman from Rhode Island, to gain control.
	A Man Without a Country (subtitle: A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush's America) is a collection of essays published in 2005 by the author Kurt Vonnegut. The extremely short essays that comprise this book deal with topics ranging from the importance of humor, to problems with modern technology, to Vonnegut's opinions on the differences between men and women.
	2 B R 0 2 B is a satiric short story that imagines life (and death) in a future world where aging has been "cured" and population control is mandated and administered by the government.
	The Sirens of Titan is a Hugo Award-nominated novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history.
	Timequake is a semi-autobiographical work by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. published in 1997. Vonnegut described the novel as a "stew", in which he alternates between summarizing a novel he had been struggling with for a number of years, and waxing nostalgic about various events in his life.
	Welcome to the Monkey House is an assortment of short stories written by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in August 1968. The stories range from war-time epics to futuristic thrillers, given with satire and Vonnegut's unique edge. The stories are often inter-twined and convey the same underlying messages on human nature and present society.

About Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

(November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

He was an American novelist known for works blending
satire, black comedy, and science fiction including
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963),
and Breakfast of Champions (1973). He was known for
his humanist beliefs as well as being honorary president
of the American Humanist Association.

Novels

• Player Piano (1952)
• The Sirens of Titan (1959)
• Mother Night (1961)
• Cat's Cradle (1963)
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; or, Pearls before Swine (1965)
• Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children's Crusade (1969)
• Breakfast of Champions; or, Goodbye Blue Monday (1973)
• Slapstick; or, Lonesome No More (1976)
• Jailbird (1979)
• Deadeye Dick (1982)
• Galápagos (1985)
• Bluebeard (1987)
• Hocus Pocus (1990)
• Timequake (1997)

Collections of short stories and essays

• Canary in a Cathouse (1961)
• Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works (1968)
• Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974)
• Palm Sunday (1981)
• Fates Worse than Death (1991)
• Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (1999)
• God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
• A Man Without a Country (2005)
• Armageddon in Retrospect (2008, posthumous)
• Look at the Birdie (2009, posthumous)

If you want to know things about his Personal life, his Death and Posthumous tributes, his Works, Politics and Religion Beliefs, and other stuff you can click here

Next you can find some external links to read more about this writer

Vonnegut.com Kurt Vonnegut's official website
vonnegutsociety.net The Kurt Vonnegut Society website
Kurt Vonnegut at the Open Directory Project
Kurt Vonnegut papers at the Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington

"American Playhouse" Who Am I This Time? (1982)

Plot Summary for

"American Playhouse"

Who Am I This Time? (1982)

From a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Christopher Walken is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely while on screen. Susan Sarandon is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Walken's Stanley when the theater group does A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the problem, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.

Director: Jonathan Demme

Writers: Neal Miller (writer)
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (story)

TV Series: "American Playhouse"

Original Air Date: 2 February 1982.

Episode Credited Cast

CAST

Susan Sarandon is Helene Shaw	Christopher Walken is Harry Nash
And Robert Ridgely ... George Johnson Dorothy Patterson ... Doris Caitlin Hart ... Lydia Les Podewell ... Les Aaron Freeman ... Andrew Jerry Vile ... Albert Paula Frances ... Minnie Mike Bacarella ... Stage Manager Ron Parady ... Vern Debbi Hopkins ... Christie Maria Todd ... Heather Sandy McLeod ... Flirt #1 Edie Vonnegut ... Flirt #2

Who Am I This Time? Part 1

Who Am I This Time? Part 2

Who Am I This Time? Part 3

Who Am I This Time? Part 4

Who Am I This Time? Part 5

Who Am I This Time? Part 6