ALT presents ‘Miracle Worker’

Even the dog reads sign language.

The Albuquerque Little Theatre is staging “The Miracle Worker” beginning on Friday, April 21.

The classic production tells the story of Annie Sullivan and her student, the deaf and blind Helen Keller. “The Miracle Worker” dramatizes the volatile relationship between the lonely teacher and her spoiled charge. Trapped in a secret, silent world, unable to communicate, Helen is violent, nearly wild and treated by her family as such. The desperate Kellers hire Sullivan as Helen’s governess and teacher. Only Annie realizes a mind and spirt lurks beneath Helen’s turmoil, waiting to be freed.

“They were both kind of broken,” director Nancy Sellin said. “It was kind of a last resort for both of them. They came together and healed.”

At 19 months, Helen Keller was infected with “brain fever”

(most likely scarlet fever).

“She was already saying ‘wah-wah,’” Sellin said. “After the fever, she couldn’t see or hear.

“Annie was born handicapped. She was nearly blind. She had a tubercular hip. She and her brother were both put in an insane asylum. It had rats in the halls; people had the DTs.”

Her brother died within two months. Annie remained there for four years until a new resident told her she could go to school; she studied at Boston’s Perkins School for the Blind.

“She had nine operations on her eyes by the age of 21,” Sellin said.

Annie began working for the Kellers in Tuscumbia, Ala., in 1887. Helen was 7 years old. Annie was 20.

“They were both stubborn, stubborn and willful, willful people,” Sellin said. “They were mirrors of each other. When they come out the other side, that’s what makes the play work.”

Nine-year-old Alina Horak plays Helen.

“I really wanted someone who was a teenager,” Sellin said, “because this role so dangerous. Every move has to be choreographed; they physically struggle the whole time.” Michelle Roe is Annie. “She was perfect; she had that stubborn streak, she was small and she could do that Irish accent,” Sellin said.

Chito the dog gets three scenes as the Keller family pet.

“His owner is deaf, so he reads sign language,” Sellin said.

The director has worked with the disabled for 20 years, once even visiting the modest Alabama home of the Kellers, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

“The water pump’s still there,” she said.

The black well-pump was where Annie reached into Helen’s dark, silent world and opened her window to language.