ASF Study Materials for by William Gibson Study Materials written by: Susan Willis ASF Dramaturg [email protected] Contact ASF: 1.800.841.4273, www.asf.net 1 by William Gibson Welcome to The Miracle Worker The challenge of writing historical Characters drama is that we all know the ending and in Tuscumbia, Alabama: something of the major characters, so raw suspense does not drive the action Captain Keller, Helen's so much as a sense of watching how the father events happen. William Gibson dazzled the Kate Keller, his second wife, genre with his 1959 award-winning play, Helen's mother The Miracle Worker, dramatizing a superb James Keller, his son by his All-American story of a young woman and first marriage a child who face immense challenges and Helen Keller, blind and deaf triumph. The action is as physical as Rocky since a toddler and as intensely language-based as the Aunt Ev[eline], the Captain's recent filmArrival —and the climax comes sister down to the understanding of one word. A Doctor People usually consider The Miracle Viney, a black servant Worker to be "the play about Helen Keller." While Helen is indeed the play's focus of Martha servants' energy and the miracle happened within The well pump at Ivy Green, Helen Keller's Percy } children her, the actual worker of the miracle is Annie childhood home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, with cottage near the house in background Sullivan—the play is about Annie Sullivan at Perkins Institute, Boston: with Helen Keller. Gibson puts Annie's Mr. Anagnos, head of the presence, her practice, her values, and "I left the well-house eager to Institute her candor at the center of the action; she learn. Everything had a name, drives the play just as she drives the quest Annie Sullivan, a recent and each name gave birth to a graduate to give Helen language and the chance for a full life. new thought. As we returned to Blind girls, students at Institute Annie's quest for Helen is for what the house, every object I touched makes us human—not just the human seemed to quiver with life." and offstage voices shape, but understanding, language, ideas, —Helen Keller, in The heart and mind and soul. Helen's access to Story of My Life (1904) Time: The 1880s, mostly her "humanity" left her in a sudden jolt, and spring of 1887 the being who was left she herself wrote of as "Phantom," a thing living in a "no- About These Study Materials Setting: In and near the world" of "thwarted desire and temper." No These materials and activities can be adapt- Keller home, Ivy Green, wonder she called the day Sullivan arrived in Tuscumbia "the birthday of my soul." ed to suit any grade level and contain: in Tuscumbia, Alabama, • background information about the major and briefly at The Perkins The idea of teaching as a gift and figures Institute for the Blind in learning a miracle has never been so simply • analysis of the play's structure and charac- Boston nor so eloquently demonstrated as in the ter development story of Annie Sullivan's meeting with Helen • discussion questions about character Images: Several images Keller. The child's life gains knowledge and • analysis of issues and imagery herein are from American thus opportunity and a future in which to • historical context about the education Foundation for the Blind via explore it. And once we know the life stories of children in the 19th century and the its educational use provision; of both women, we realize the worker of education of the blind and deaf http://www.afb.org miracles is just as remarkable as the child • a post-production worksheet and from Perkins Institute Activities appear in green boxes. website, http://www.perkins. and woman she taught. org/history 2 by William Gibson William Gibson, Playwright Like many writers, William Gibson, in the film version of the script three years a native New Yorker, waited for fame to later, which Gibson adapted. recognize his work, and in his case his The Miracle Worker won him a Tony faith more than paid off—or as he put it, for the script and won both Bancroft and "Good things come to those who wait … Duke Best Actress and Best Supporting far too long." Actress Awards. The actresses also In the mid-1950s his first novel was won the Academy Awards for their film bought by MGM and made into a film. At performances, and the screenplay was that point he could have had a career as nominated for an Oscar. a screenwriter, but he decided he was Gibson's subsequent plays included not a committee-style writer; he stuck to the book for a musical version of Clifford playwriting. Good move. Odets's Golden Boy (1964), a play about In 1958 he premiered his first play on the young William Shakespeare (1968), Broadway, Two for the Seesaw, starring a play about the Puritan Anne Hutchison Playwright William Gibson Henry Fonda and Anne Bancroft in her (1980), and a sequel to The Miracle Worker debut role. He followed this the next year called Monday after the Miracle (1982), with an adaptation for the stage of a teleplay along with a one-woman play about Golda script he'd done, The Miracle Worker, again Meir that became the longest running one- starring Anne Bancroft and introducing woman Broadway show in history. Born Patty Duke as Helen Keller in a stunning in 1914, he died in 2008 after a long and performance. They both revived these roles successful career. How True Is This "History" Play? We tell stories of the past to learn about Keller's illness or Sullivan's own childhood. it, to learn from it, and to shine light on our Not so. Gibson has not only done a great own world and experience, to see it more deal of good research, but has also used clearly or from another angle. The tradition it faithfully, especially since the words he of the history play, from the ancient Greeks draws from are usually those of Helen Keller through Shakespeare to Hamilton today can and Annie Sullivan themselves. add a filter or a rhythm or a perspective to The two central participants in this raw facts, and the very act of presenting incredible tale both wrote about it, Sullivan facts in a biography of any sort means in letters to a friend in Boston during the "shaping" it. events, and Keller, once she mastered In her later life Helen Keller had strong language, in a number of books, primarily values and championed causes aplenty, The Story of My Life (1904) and later in from the needs of the disabled to the Teacher (1954). needs of workers, from women's suffrage So appreciate that many of the points to antimilitarism, but in this play as a made and all the physical contests in Tuscumbia, Alabama 6-year-old she battles only to have what this play are essentially true to how they she wants—and she does not yet realize occurred. Gibson did tighten the time line what that is. The person who does realize slightly, but since the entire timeline of her deeper needs and wants is the person the major action from Sullivan's arrival in she's fighting, Annie Sullivan. Alabama to the breakthrough is less than The contests in the play seem intensely five weeks, the tweaks are almost invisible. dramatic, so it is easy to assume Gibson With a play so faithful in its main plot, this hyped up the events, including details of time we can trust a great—and true—story 3 by William Gibson Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller: Picture Their Childhoods The two famous women whose first Helen Keller's birthplace is on the meeting this play narrates share early National Registry of Historic Places. Annie childhood time on a farm and some Sullivan's birthplace is lost to history, but her experience in a small cabin. Beyond that, family lived in extreme poverty. Sullivan was Tewkesbury Almshouse they grew up in different social strata, which born in a village outside Springfield, MA, where Annie Sullivan lived in 19th-century America, perhaps as now, then moved to "a dilapidated little cabin" from age 10 to 14. meant in different worlds. on an uncle's farm for two years after her mother died. Once her father abandoned his remaining children, "home" became the Tewkesbury Almshouse, the poorhouse, an appallingly run institution where, after her younger brother Jimmie's death, Annie was alone amid diseased or socially outcast adults. It was not a green or nurturing world; she and her brother had played in the "deadroom," the morgue. * * * * * Helen Keller's early years were spent at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia AL, on what was the family's estate after the Civil War. A realtor today would list it as a bungalow, 4/0—4 bedrooms, no bathrooms, detached kitchen. Nearby was a one-room cottage in which the Captain and his second wife had lived when first married, and to this cottage Annie Sullivan took Helen for isolation in her early work with the child. The home was a green world full of gardens and flowers as Keller recalls in her autobiographies. Ivy Green, where Helen Keller was born and lived for the first seven years of her life. After that, she was educated and lived in the Northeast. Left is the cottage to which Annie Sullivan took Helen to focus the child's attention on learning.