February 2009

Dear Subscriber:

SAINT JOAN ELECTRIFIED our stage with laughter, passion and wit, and we are so grateful for your reception of this remarkable production of a remarkable play. February brings us the true story of two more amazingly driven and courageous women on a miraculous mission—Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan—in William Gibson’s Tony Award-winning The Miracle Worker. This beautifully crafted telling of Sullivan’s quest to usher a deaf and blind Keller into not only a functional but also a fulfilling life, had its beginnings as a 1957 teleplay then was reworked for Broadway and eventually was written into the screenplay with which many of you are probably familiar, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in Oscar-winning performances. The individual lives represented in this touching story are inspirational enough—Sullivan, a pioneering educator at the age of 20 after a childhood spent in public asylums, and Keller, an author and social and political advocate who sought to improve a world that she could neither see nor hear—but the real power of their lives and in turn this portrait of them, is an insatiable hunger both to teach and to learn.

YES, THE PSYCHOLOGICAL and physical challenges that both women met and overcame are staggering—Sullivan was blind herself until a series of operations restored her sight—but what makes them exceptional is their understanding of and appreciation for the incredible wonder that it is to think and communicate—to know one’s own mind and to be able to express it to another. It is this knowledge and sense of awe at it that fuels their journey together and makes it so very compelling. Keller discusses her realization of self and thought in The World I Live In:

My inner life, then, was a blank without past, present or future, without hope or anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith…I was not conscious of any change or process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought only of objects, and only objects I wanted…When I learned the meaning of “I” and “me” and found that I was something, I began to think. Then consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of objects, names, qualities and properties. Thought made me conscious of love, joy and all the emotions. I was eager to know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and understood, and the blind impetus, which had before driven me hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished forever.

KELLER DESCRIBES MORE precisely the integral role that Sullivan’s insistence played in defining and expanding her world in her autobiography, The Story of My Life: “At the beginning I was only a little mass of possibilities. It was my teacher who unfolded and developed them. When she came, everything about me breathed of love and joy and was full of meaning. She has never since let pass an opportunity to point out the beauty that is in everything, nor has she ceased trying in thought and action and example to make my life sweet and useful.” Gibson’s script is a call to seek, unfold and celebrate those “little masses of possibility” and perhaps most importantly, not to allow a season of education to provide lifetime satisfaction. When Sullivan scores an admittedly hard-won victory in managing to teach Keller the basics of self-conduct and self-care, she is stunned to learn that the family sees this manageable but intellectually meaningless life as an endpoint for Helen. She has seen the sparks of intelligence and passion in her pupil and will not be satisfied until they are a steadily burning fire, even when she, herself, is uncertain how to kindle the flame. The real-life Keller writes of the danger of complacency in her autobiography:

The only lightless dark is the night of ignorance and insensibility. We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our senses. It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara. I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing! It were better far to sail forever in the night of blindness, with sense and feeling and mind, than to be thus content with the mere act of seeing. They have the sunset, the morning skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this enchanted world with a barren stare. The calamity of the blind is immense, irreparable. But it does not take away our share of the things that count—service, friendship, humor, imagination, wisdom. It is the secret inner will that controls one’s fate.

Sullivan’s and Keller’s triumph then, is not only one of personal victory over private adversities, but also a corporate defeat of ignorance and stagnation, as their story calls us out to exercise our own “secret inner wills.”

SUSAN GREGG DIRECTS this stirring piece with Amy Landon in the title role of “miracle worker”—a designation first publicly given to Sullivan by author Mark Twain—while Helen will be alternately played by Olivia Jane Prosser and Hannah Ryan. Krista Hoeppner and Rep favorite John Rensenhouse are the loving but beleaguered Kate and Captain Keller, and local actor Jerry Vogel returns as Mr. Anagnos. Also in the household are Donna Weinsting, Matthew Carlson, Monica Parks, Ashlee Marnae and Jarrett D. Harkless. Scenic designer John Ezell, costume designer James Scott, lighting designer Michael Philippi and sound designer Tom Mardikes all work together to create Helen’s world which slowly unfolds from darkness and silence to bold images and ideas. This is a wonderful show to enjoy with those who inspire you and those you hope to inspire. We look forward to sharing it with you.

See you at the theatre,

Steven Woolf
Artistic Director


P.S. On February 13, opening night of this poignant story about courage and communication, we will be highlighting Delta Gamma Center for Children with Visual Impairments, a local agency providing services for children who are blind or visually impaired, including some with hearing impairments. If you are interested in learning more about the Delta Gamma Center, please stop by the display table in the lobby or visit http://www.dgckids.org.

NEW YORK REPORT: The Cherry Orchard, which is being performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music, is part of the Bridge Project featuring both American and British Actors. Our London tour group will see this magnificent production of this classic play in London this spring. Featuring Sinéad Cusack and Simon Russell Beale in a very accessible translation by Tom Stoppard, this is a production of beauty, heartfelt emotion and brilliant acting and directing. This same cast will also be performing The Winter’s Tale—check the BAM website for details. Reunion is a startling work by Lynn Nottage that is playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. It is powerful and disturbing with amazing performances. The material is adult. In some ways it is a setting of Mother Courage in war- torn Africa. Becky Shaw is a modern-day comedy that has wonderful performances at Second Stage, and The Marvelous Wonderettes at Westside Arts is lots of fun—four women singing the songs of the ‘50s at a high school prom and then in the second act, the hits of the ‘60s at a 10-year reunion prom. It is not unlike Forever Plaid—just lots of fun.