What an awesome treat! Bathed with the light from a beautiful full moon, my friend Nina, her three kids – Katya, Nick and Victor, and myself watched “The Miracle Worker” play at Helen Keller’s birthplace! Every year during “The Helen Keller” festival in Tuscumbia, Alabama, this famous play by William Gibson, is produced in an outdoor theatre on the property that was her birthplace. This famous piece of property is known as IVY GREEN.
HELEN KELLER’S BIRTHPLACE: IVY GREEN
Nick, Viktor, and Katya confessed to me that they really did not want to go Helen Keller’s House and “see a boring play.” They were singing a different tune after watching the play, thanking me effusively for the opportunity. The play begins with Helen Keller’s parents discovery that their nineteen month old daughter was deaf and blind, after contracting a severe illness. At their wit’s end, the parents hire Miss Annie Sullivan to teach Helen. In a battle of wills, twenty-year-old Annie Sullivan refuses to give up her quest to teach language to Helen via the manual hand alphabet. The play ends with the breakthrough at the water pump where in Helen Keller’s words, “The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it joy, set it free.”
THE SET OF “THE MIRACLE WORKER” PLAY
My friend Nina and I were very impressed with the actors and actresses. Avery Isbell, an eight-year-old girl, did a magnificent job of playing young Helen. We were both in awe because she played a very believable deaf/blind young girl. Jamie Connolly, just graduated from high school, was hard working and determined in her role, just like Annie was in real life. All of the cast was from the Tuscumbia/Florence/Muscle Shoals Alabama area. All’s I have to say, they rival any professional actors and actresses from New York or Hollywood!
Wondering what to do on a Friday or Saturday night in June or early July? It’s worth the drive to Tuscumbia to see “The Miracle Worker” play! What a tribute to the teacher who persevered to give the world to her student and the deaf/blind student who grew up to graduate from Harvard and travel around the world inspiring others to live their best life!
NICK AND VIKTOR AT ‘THE WATER PUMP’ WHERE HELEN LEARNED LANGUAGE
