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.
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I remember being enamored of Helen Keller when I was a child, but hadn't ever thought about her adult life. Thanks.
That she considered herself one of the fortunate, not less fortunate, puts me to shame.
I had also read about the controversy over not hiring a deaf person for the part. But isn't that like saying a person can't play a cancer patient if she doesn't have cancer? Or a person with a limp can't be portrayed by someone who can walk perfectly?
I actually went to Helen Keller Elementary school. I know a ton about her life and perseverance, which is indeed admirable. But, when we don't get to see the whole human struggle, people simply use out takes from her life for their own purposes.
Thank you, too, for the extra footage. I've never seen this bit. Rated highly! Have a great weekend.
I was just talking about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan tonight at dinner. A girl in school today (second grade) reminded me of Helen Keller. Like there's a wild, untamed brain inside a spoiled, appeased, disability-labeled head just wanting help getting organized. Anyway, that's a whole other can of worms.
"The Miracle Worker" has fossilized one moment in time—that ah-ha! at the water pump—and does a great disservice in not offering a more nuanced look at the struggles of the disabled for autonomy and control of their own stories.
That said, the Broadway producer has every right to cast a big-name as Helen. Just as I have every right not to buy a ticket. What I'd like to buy a ticket for is a new dramatization of the story, told from the POV of Alliance for Inclusion of the Arts.
Only many years later did I learn of Helen Keller's commitment to socialism and social justice. Only then did I realize that rather than being a celebration, the play actually diminished a remarkable woman. Thus does our culture treat those who challenge it.
I have 2 conclusions. Art is dead and is being replaced by commerce, and as you stated "as a portrayal of a profoundly disabled 19th Century woman, it's saccharine and sanitized to the point of caricature."
This is spot on. But the reason, or one of the reasons that this is so, is because, by having a hearing/sighted actress, the performance can only be a hollow shell of the character. Without the actual blindness and deafness, one can not be expected to fully embrace the emotional impact that living with a disability has on the person.
And that lack of empathy, and the apathy toward that lack of empathy in the audience has allowed us to come to a point where people can say "they're just acting"...when, what they really mean is, "Thank God that's not me, and I only have to see this for an hour or so"
Because that *IS* what most able bodied people are thinking, even if they cant admit it
After I posted this, I remembered that when I was about 8, and at the height of my "Little House on the Prairie" phase, I saw the Melissa Gilbert version of "The Miracle Worker" and spent the next three years taking sign language courses through the adult-learning program at the University of Vermont (which required all sorts of paperwork and orders to leave the room on the day the instructors covered swear-words and insults. Those, I picked up later.) And one of the first live performances I ever attended was the National Theater of the Deaf production of "The Illiad."
@screamin mama -- the video was one of the first things that comes up when you search "Helen Keller" on YouTube. I started out wanting to find a clip from one of the films, but this was so much better.
@skeletnwmn -- the producers are at least looking for a deaf understudy, but deaf-blindness is so rare today, I don't know that there is much of a pool to draw from. (The National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness puts the number at 45,000 to 50,000 in the U.S., compared to almost 1 million profoundly deaf and about 20 million hard-of-hearing.)
@Sally Swift -- You may not have been old enough to grasp the message, but it obviously gave you a wonderful memory. Thank you for sharing it with us.
@Karin -- yes, and this was a huge part of the discussion in the NYT comments: an actor does not have to share the affliction to portray the emotion. Plus, who is to say that a deaf actress would connect to the role in the ways we might expect?
@Kate -- Thanks, and hope you have a happy Halloween!
@tomreedtoon -- I have to admit, I loved that South Park ep. The turkeys in particular. Does that make me a bad person?
@Martha -- Another thing to put on my already-too-long to-read list...
@Bobby the Lip -- I've only seen the film version of Patty Duke-Anne Bancroft, but yeah, to think they did that show after show for 21 straight months on Broadway. And you're right: being in the same theater with that energy must give it much more immediacy than film. I think Abigail Breslin is an amazing young actress, and she'll bring a lot of herself to the role.
@Placebostudman -- I try to think that art is not so much dead as sleeping. :-) Using non-disabled actors to portray the disabled does play into the audience's need to feel comfortable and distanced, and there is a lot of there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I involved....but if you remove that comfortable distance and push the audience's face into their discomfort, you don't necessarily make them more attuned to the lives of the disabled. In fact, they might shut down altogether. It's a pretty delicate balancing act.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKNOA54747520080205
Your second point is that society this play, if it were differently written, could help change society's view of the deaf. (?)
Do you see some inherent irony in these two points of view? If a play were better written to help change society's view, do you think it might help to facilitate a third rendering of the play in which people would pay to see a deaf person play a deaf person?
When would that point arrive? Or would it ever arrive?
Or, what's the difference between a hearing person playing a deaf person and a white actor wearing blackface?
I like your other points about Helen Keller though. That's a powerful quote at the end. She was also a member of the American communist party, but this is hardly the stuff of the Miracle Worker.
But, honestly, I think that "star" argument sounds a little feeble to me. Marlee Matlin remains the youngest woman to ever win an academy award. It just happened, apparently, that Henry Winkler discovered her, and they basically made Children of a Lesser God to feature her.
Are you trying to tell me that if they found an exceptional young deaf actress for that role, and it had glowing reviews, people wouldn't go to see it? C'mon, mainstream audiences LOVE that kind of story. The media laps it up. Why do you think Helen Keller's story is still alive?
I would have more respect for the guy if he just said, listen this is a merely a vehicle for Abigail Breslin because people pay big bucks for child stars. We care about the deaf, of course, but it's not really what motivated the production. It's about exploiting a talented, geeky actress while she's still young, and this was the right play for that purpose.
Don't you think?
I can't even begin to tell you the outrage (which most people ignored) when Tom Cruise starred in Born on the 4rh of July, and Eric Stoltz starred in Water Dance. The disabled people I know were outraged and ashamed at those weak, shallow portrayals of disability, that were based on preconceived notions and the aforementioned "There but for the grace of God" sentiment mentioned by the author
I think that a production that had "The Miracle Worker," word-for-word -- with occasional interruptions during which a narrator and interpreter would read from Miss Keller's writings, on exactly these topics -- would be a smash hit.
The "deaf" role in Babel? Given to a hearing woman. The "deaf" role in the stage production of the Heart is a Lonely Hunter? Given to a hearing actor in spite of protests from the National Association of the Deaf and Deaf West Theater.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/theater/14deaf.html
People would be outraged if white people were put in black face because no suitable black actor could be found; however, it seems that it's appropriate to take any fool hearing person off the street, give them a rudimentary education in sign language, and then have them play deaf roles while folks such as yourself smugly make assumptions on the value of the role to the overall deaf (and blind) community.
In truth, there are so few professional deaf actors that any paid role is liberating and a validation of deaf skills. The problem is oppressive hearing assholes don't want to make the necessary accommodations. Because while discriminating against someone for gender, race, and sexuality is wholly taboo, in these days, it's perfectly okay to tell a deaf person to fuck off because they're an inconvenience. Feh!
I think John Irving dealt with this bizarre approach to life very capably regarding the Ellen Jamesians in his book "The World According to Garp." While one should not be denied opportunity based on perceived disability, one should not have to embody that disability to be supportive of the disabled. A little sanity, please.
I'd like many of you to take a moment, and re-write your sentences flipping deaf/hearing with black/white or female/male (or vice versa)...
Seriously, what if people had said: well gee, playing roles and money is what it's about, no reason a white star shouldn't just put on some makeup and play a black character, or why a boy can't just as easily portray what it's like to be a teenaged girl or grandmother...
If that truly is the case, then why are casting calls done specifically with the race/gender/age of a character in mind? (For that matter, then why aren't any talented disabled actors being given non-disabled people's parts?) There are plenty of aspiring highly-talented disabled (of any type) actors; others voice an interest in acting as kids but are discouraged by adults aware that they're beyond unlikely to get parts.
It's a nasty cycle: disabled actors aren't hired because there are no disabled stars because they aren't hired. Had nobody started taking chances on casting actual blacks/women/kids to play their roles (knowing that personal experience gives additional nuance), they never would have gotten past that cyclic stage, either.
PS Actually, it's not at all necessary to put on the horrid "brave cheery cripple" act to survive -- it hasn't been since SSI and the ability to hire personal attendants became an option.
I agree with you on pretty much every point here, although my cynici--er, uh, I mean my life experience has been such that I am deeply doubtful of the existence, then or now, of any man able to take on such challenges as Ms. Keller knew she would have presented to a mate; most will fold at far less. At all events, it's moot point for her now. Thanks again for this!
"hopelessly naive"
"drenched in privilege"
"take any fool hearing person" (are hearing folks all fools to you?)
"folks such as yourself smugly make assumptions"
"oppressive hearing assholes" (again, pretty sweeping)
"it's perfectly okay to tell a deaf person to fuck off" (who did?)
I don't care how justified you feel in angrily repudiating what you infer is writing that slights the deaf community; you won't be taken seriously if you are so nasty. Fellow Arizonan, try for some civility.
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Ms. Keller's political writings, her adult life and struggles - so much more interesting and poignant than the story we've all been told. I'd never seen that quote, this was an amazing woman with a keen eye for the truth. Rated.