Helen Keller & The Limits of Miracles
Helen Keller & The Limits of Miracles
Posted by
RemiLogan
48 days ago
The New York Times ArtBeat blog reports today on the controversy over the selection of 13-year old Abigail Breslin to play Helen Keller in a Broadway revival of "The Miracle Worker" set to open this winter. "Ms. Breslin," blogger Patrick Healy helpfully notes, "can see and hear."
This does not sit well with the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. "We do not think it's OK for reputable producers to cast this lead role without seriously considering an actress from our community," says Sharon Jensen, the group's executive director.
Lead producer David Richenthal says he is open to selecting a young deaf actress as Breslin's understudy, but counters that "it's simply naive to think that in this day and age, you'll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making serious effort to get a star."
Jensen has little sympathy. "I understand how difficult it is to capitalize a new production on Broadway, but that to me is not the issue. There are other, large human and artistic issues at at stake here."
Who is right? Hard to say. I tend to side with Richenthal: particularly in these trying financial times, it takes a lot of star power to get people to shell out upwards of $100 a ticket for a revival -- especially when you rent that 1962, the 1979 and the 2000 film versions from Netflix for a few bucks.
And frankly, I don't know why Ms. Jensen would WANT to have a deaf or blind actress in the role. You can't beat "The Miracle Worker" as a triumph-of-the-human-spirit-over-adversity tearjerker, but as a portrayal of a profoundly disabled 19th Century woman, it's saccharine and sanitized to the point of caricature.
More illuminating might be a play about Helen's life after that singular moment at the water pump. While her accomplishments throughout her life should not be minimized, neither should her struggles.
Even during her lifetime, Keller was portrayed as the model handicapped woman: beautiful, kind, patient, virginal. And by all accounts, she was a kind and loving woman who worked hard to expand beyond the range of her disabilities. But those disabilities could never be overcome to the degree where she enjoyed any kind of autonomy. She was dependent on others -- primarily Annie Sullivan -- for just about everything, and that level of dependence had a ripple effect across her life.
Most tragically, Keller was never allowed to be in a position where she might meet and fall in love and marry and have children. Her job was to be Helen Keller, handicapped martyr.
In 1922, she received a marriage proposal from a widower in Kansas City, and while she politely turned him down (after a time), her letters to him were stunningly frank. He had read her books, she explained, but he had no idea of the impact of her handicaps. "One does not grumble in print, or hold up one's broken wings for the thoughtless and indifferent to gaze at. One hides as much as possible one's awkwardness and helplessness under a fine philosophy and a smiling face. What I have printed gives no knowledge of my actual life."
Neither her teacher or family or the public would have been able to accept that she had the normal urges and desires, that a loving mate might be able to satisfy those urges and desires. She turned those feelings inward, not out of naivety, but an act of will, endured for many years.
"I told you that time had done its work well, and that I no longer cry for the spoiled treasures of womanhood," the 42-year old wrote. "I did not mean to imply by this observation a forced an melancholy resignation. Through the wise, loving ministrations of my teacher, Mrs. Macy, who since my earliest childhood has been a light to me in all dark places, I faced consciously the strong sex-urge of my nature and turned that life-energy into channels of satisfying sympathy and work. I never dreamed of suppressing that God-given creative impulse. I simply directed the whole force of my heart-energy to the accomplishment of difficult tasks and the service of others less fortunate than myself. Consequently, I have led a happy, and I hope, a useful life." But she was not deceived about the cost.
That is the Helen Keller people need to meet: the flesh-and-blood woman for whom society had no real place except a pedestal. She speaks to our reflexive attitudes towards the disabled. That would be a play worth seeing.
This does not sit well with the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. "We do not think it's OK for reputable producers to cast this lead role without seriously considering an actress from our community," says Sharon Jensen, the group's executive director.
Lead producer David Richenthal says he is open to selecting a young deaf actress as Breslin's understudy, but counters that "it's simply naive to think that in this day and age, you'll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making serious effort to get a star."
Jensen has little sympathy. "I understand how difficult it is to capitalize a new production on Broadway, but that to me is not the issue. There are other, large human and artistic issues at at stake here."
Who is right? Hard to say. I tend to side with Richenthal: particularly in these trying financial times, it takes a lot of star power to get people to shell out upwards of $100 a ticket for a revival -- especially when you rent that 1962, the 1979 and the 2000 film versions from Netflix for a few bucks.
And frankly, I don't know why Ms. Jensen would WANT to have a deaf or blind actress in the role. You can't beat "The Miracle Worker" as a triumph-of-the-human-spirit-over-adversity tearjerker, but as a portrayal of a profoundly disabled 19th Century woman, it's saccharine and sanitized to the point of caricature.
More illuminating might be a play about Helen's life after that singular moment at the water pump. While her accomplishments throughout her life should not be minimized, neither should her struggles.
Even during her lifetime, Keller was portrayed as the model handicapped woman: beautiful, kind, patient, virginal. And by all accounts, she was a kind and loving woman who worked hard to expand beyond the range of her disabilities. But those disabilities could never be overcome to the degree where she enjoyed any kind of autonomy. She was dependent on others -- primarily Annie Sullivan -- for just about everything, and that level of dependence had a ripple effect across her life.
Most tragically, Keller was never allowed to be in a position where she might meet and fall in love and marry and have children. Her job was to be Helen Keller, handicapped martyr.
In 1922, she received a marriage proposal from a widower in Kansas City, and while she politely turned him down (after a time), her letters to him were stunningly frank. He had read her books, she explained, but he had no idea of the impact of her handicaps. "One does not grumble in print, or hold up one's broken wings for the thoughtless and indifferent to gaze at. One hides as much as possible one's awkwardness and helplessness under a fine philosophy and a smiling face. What I have printed gives no knowledge of my actual life."
Neither her teacher or family or the public would have been able to accept that she had the normal urges and desires, that a loving mate might be able to satisfy those urges and desires. She turned those feelings inward, not out of naivety, but an act of will, endured for many years.
"I told you that time had done its work well, and that I no longer cry for the spoiled treasures of womanhood," the 42-year old wrote. "I did not mean to imply by this observation a forced an melancholy resignation. Through the wise, loving ministrations of my teacher, Mrs. Macy, who since my earliest childhood has been a light to me in all dark places, I faced consciously the strong sex-urge of my nature and turned that life-energy into channels of satisfying sympathy and work. I never dreamed of suppressing that God-given creative impulse. I simply directed the whole force of my heart-energy to the accomplishment of difficult tasks and the service of others less fortunate than myself. Consequently, I have led a happy, and I hope, a useful life." But she was not deceived about the cost.
That is the Helen Keller people need to meet: the flesh-and-blood woman for whom society had no real place except a pedestal. She speaks to our reflexive attitudes towards the disabled. That would be a play worth seeing.
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