The CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE
At the University of Tennessee
PRESENTS
TEACHER GUIDE
Teacher Guide Compiled by David Brian Alley
TABLE OF CONTENTS
For the Teachers
Live theatre offers your students an opportunity to experience new ideas, challenge assumptions, and discover stories and people unknown to them.
It is our hope that this study guide will help you help your students to get the most
out of their experience with CBT’s Season For Youth.
What you will find in this teacher’s guide:
About CBT Student Matinees------3
From the Director------4
About the Playwright------5
Characters in the Play------7
Ivy Green: The Keller Home------8
Anne Sullivan------13
Questions for Discussion------15
Treatment of the Disabled------16
Learning to Communicate through Deaf-Blindness------18
The Perkins Institute------20
ASL Spelling Chart------22
Crossword Puzzle------23
Activities and Discussion Topics------24
Suggested Theatre Vocabulary------25 Discussion Questions about the Theatre------26
About the Clarence Brown Theatre------27
We look forward to seeing you and
your students at the theatre.
About CBT Student Matinees
TheMatinees will begin at 9:30 am on October 7, 10, 15, & 17, 2014in the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
We ask that you arrive at the theatre by 9:00 a.m. so that students may be seated in an orderly and timely manner.
Student audiences are often the most rewarding audiences that an acting ensemble can face. We want every performance to be a positive experience for both audience and cast, and we ask you to familiarize your students with the theatre etiquette that follows:
The performers need the audience’s full attention and focus. Remember that the performers are there in the auditorium with you, trying to perform. Performances require an audience to think inwardly, not to share your thoughts aloud. Conversation (even in whispers) carries easily to others in the audience and to the actors on the stage. It can be disruptive and distracting.
There is no food allowed in the theatre: soda, candy, gum, and all other snacks. Wrappers make noise and are distracting. Please keep these items on the bus or throw them away before you enter the auditorium. There are no backpacks allowed in the theatre.
Pagers, watch alarms and other electronic devices should be turned off before the performance begins. When watch alarms, cell phones and pagers go off it is very distracting for the actors and the audience.
Attending a live performance is a time for you to reflect and allow yourself to get wrapped up in the experience. As theatre artists we approach our audiences with respect and expect the same in return.
What to bring to the
Theatre —
Curiosity
Imagination
Respect for others
An open mind
What to leave behind —
Food and conversation
Cell phones, pagers, noise-makers, etc.
Backpacks
FROM THE DIRECTOR
by
Kate Buckley
The famous phrase “miracle worker” originated in a postcard from Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) to Anne Sullivan. In it, he signed off with warm regard and limitless admiration of the wonders you have performed as a miracle-worker.
Our playwright, William Gibson, stumbled upon the correspondence of Anne Sullivan in a library and they became the inspiration for his play. At first a Photoplay Award for Best Teleplay in 1962, it eventually brought Gibson a Tony Award for Best Play and an Oscar Nomination for Best Screenplay. In both theatre and film, it is now considered an American Classic.
All of the exchanges in the play are derived from factual events, but woven together in such a way that we, the audience, are allowed to experience the ‘miracle’ that Ms. Sullivan was able to work – how Helen connected spelling a word to understanding language. Helen called it her “soul’s sudden awakening.”
In 1887 Anne Sullivan, just twenty years old, improvised a method of teaching which changed Helen’s world, and since then her methods have contributed to teaching the deaf and blind throughout the world. Over time, Helen and Anne’s relationship continues to be an inspiration for generations of students, teachers, writers, politicians, educators and us, the creative team at the Clarence Brown Theatre.
Our pre-production work, designs, construction and rehearsals have been a labor of love based on all of our respect for these two extraordinary women. Now, with gratitude for your support of the theatre at UT, we present this production to you. We hope you find meaning and joy in our efforts.
Kate Buckley
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
WILLIAM GIBSON
An author of plays, poetry, fiction, and criticism, Gibson (born 1914) is best known for his drama The Miracle Worker (1959). Praised for its honest, unsentimental treatment of the relationship between Helen Keller, a woman born deaf, blind and mute who grew up to became a nationally celebrated writer and public figure, and Annie Sullivan, the nurse who teaches Helen language and morals, The Miracle Worker remains Gibson's most admired and revived work.
Although Gibson's works have been variously faulted as superficially realistic dramas that sentimentalize the serious issues they raise, Gibson is praised for his accurate ear for dialogue and strong command of dramatic conflict. Robert Brustein observed: "Gibson possesses substantial literary and dramatic gifts, and an integrity of the highest order. In addition, he brings to his works authentic compassion, wit, bite, and humor, and a lively, literate prose style equalled by few American dramatists."
Gibson was born in New York City, where he attended City College of New York from 1930 to 1932. Following his graduation, he supported himself as a piano teacher in Kansas while pursuing an interest in theater. His earliest plays, produced in Topeka, were light comedies that Gibson revised and restaged during his later career. The first, A Cry of Players (1948), concerns a sixteenth-century English playwright named Will who is prompted to leave his wife and family for the life of the London theater, while the second, Dinny and the Witches (1948), features as its eponymous protagonist a Faustian character who is sentenced to death by three comic witches for having stopped "the clock of eternal time." Gibson first achieved widespread popular success with Two for the Seesaw (1958), his first major play produced in New York City. Set in New York in the 1880s, this work combines humor and melodrama to depict the relationship between GittelMosca, an overgenerous, unemployed dancer, and Jerry Ryan, a selfish Nebraska lawyer who becomes involved in a love affair with Gittel while preparing to divorce his wife. Although Jerry leaves Gittel to return to his wife, Gibson concludes the play by implying that Gittel has gained from the brief relationship by becoming more self-assertive, while Jerry has learned humility and concern for others. Characterizing Two for the Seesaw as a casual entertainment, most critics praised the play's brisk dialogue and Gibson's compassionate treatment of his characters. Brooks Atkinson commented: "By the time the curtain comes down, you are not so much aware that Mr. Gibson has brought off a technical stunt as that he has looked inside the hearts of two admirable people and made a charming full-length play out of them."
Gibson achieved his greatest success with The Miracle Worker. Originally written and performed as a television drama, the play was later adapted for stage and film. Although realistic in tone, The Miracle Worker often makes use of cinematic shifts in time and space to illuminate the effect of the past on the present in a manner analogous to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Using innovative lighting and onstage set changes, Gibson juxtaposes Helen's present quest for language and meaningful human connection with the past experiences of Annie Sullivan, the "miracle worker" of the title who was partially cured of childhood blindness through surgical operations during her adolescence. Summoned to the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Annie becomes locked in a test of wills with Helen as well as her family, who have allowed Helen to become spoiled and uncooperative due to their pity for her and attendant refusal to administer discipline. Although faulted as superficial or exploitative by some reviewers, The Miracle Worker has been praised for Gibson's alternately heroic, humorous, and sympathetic treatment of Annie and Helen's struggle for human language and love. Walter Kerr asserted: "[Gibson has] dramatized the living mind in its incredible energy, in its determination to express itself in violence when it cannot arrange itself into thought…. When it comes, the physical contact of the child and the teacher—a contact that is for the first time meaningful and for the first time affectionate—is overwhelming."
In his nonfiction volume The Seesaw Log and Two for the Seesaw (1959), Gibson combines the text of Two for the Seesaw with a chronicle of his participation in initial productions of that play and The Miracle Worker. Asserting that the producer and director of both productions had taken commercial liberties that obscured the artistic integrity of his plays, Gibson largely withdrew from the New York theater during the 1960s and 1970s. His last major play for the New York stage, Golden Boy (1964), is a musical adaptation of Clifford Odets's book of the same title about the moral consequences that confront a talented black boxer after he accidentally kills a man in the boxing ring. Gibson's miscellaneous works of the 1960s and 1970s also include A Mass for the Dead (1968), a family chronicle about Gibson and his ancestors; A Season in Heaven (1974), a chronicle of specific events in Gibson's immediate family; and Shakespeare's Game (1978), a volume of theoretical drama criticism that borrows terminology from chess and psychology to explain relationships between scenes and between author and audience.
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
Helen Keller------Rachel Finney
Anne Sullivan------Angela Church
Captain Keller------Terry Weber*
Kate Keller------Lindsay Nance
James Keller------Erik Johnson
Doctor Anagnos------Neil Freidman*
Aunt Ev------Nancy Duckles
Viney------Tracey Copeland-Halter*
Percy------Andrew Drake
Martha------Darneisha Riley
Sarah------Kendra Booher
Beatrice------Morgan Voyles
IVY GREEN
BIRTHPLACE OF HELEN KELLER
TUSCUMBIA, ALABAMA
The Main House
The Keller home was built on a 640-acre tract of land in 1820 by David and Mary Fairfax Moore Keller, grandparents of Helen Keller. The main house is of Virginia-cottage construction, with four large rooms on the first floor bisected by a wide hall. Each room has an individual fireplace. While the above photograph does not make it appear so, the house is indeed a two-story home. Upstairs there are three rooms connected by a hall: the boys’ bedroom, Annie and Helen’s bedroom, and a trunk room.
Kate Adams Keller (Helen’s mother) was reared in Memphis, Tennessee, a descendant of the Adams family of New England. Arthur Henley Keller (Helen’s father) served as a Captain in the Confederate Cavalry, was the editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper, The North Alabamian, an attorney and farmer. During the War Between the States, the Keller Home was used as a hospital.
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The Cottage
NurseryBridal Suite
The birthplace cottage is situated east of the main house. It consists of a large room with a lovely bay window and play room. Originally the small structure was an office, but when Captain Keller brought his second bride—Helen’s mother—to Ivy Green, he furnished it as a bridal suite.
This cottage is where Helen Keller was born, a normal child, on June 27, 1880. At the age of 19 months, an illness left Helen blind and deaf. Since Helen’s parents catered to her every whim, Annie Sullivan soon realized she would have to get Helen away from her parents in order to be able to control her tantrums and teach her, so this cottage served as the school house. Annie Sullivan took Helen on a long carriage ride, so as to make Helen think she was being taken to a “school” a great distance from the house, when if fact they simply took a ride and came right back to the cottage next door to the Main House.
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The famous well pump (next page) is where Helen learned her first word, “water.” It is located behind the main house. Annie wrote these words later that historic night: “She has learned that everything has a name, and that the manual alphabet is the key to everything she wants to know.”
The Well Pump
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In 1954, through the efforts of the Helen Keller Property Board and the State of Alabama, Ivy Green was made a permanent Shrine and is included in the National Register of Historic Sites.
The homes contain much of the original furniture of the Keller Family and humdreds of mementos of Miss Keller’s life, including her library of Braille books and old Braille typewriter.
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The Kitchen Building
The Kitchen
The “Whistle Path”
The Kitchen Building, also located behind the main house, contained the Kitchen as well as the Cook’s bedroom. There is a pathway from the kitchen that leads to the back door of the house, closest to the Dining Room. This path was known as the “whistle path” as, prior to the end of the War Between the States, slaves were required to whistle as they made their way from the Kitchen Building to the Main House to ensure that they were not stealing any of the food they were carrying.
Cook’s Bedroom
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The Bedroom that Anne and Helen shared upstairs in the Main House
Anne Sullivan
Anne Sullivan was a teacher who, at age 21, taught Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute, and blind, how to communicate and read Braille.
Synopsis
Born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, Anne Sullivan was a gifted teacher best known for her work with Helen Keller, a deaf, blind, and mute child she taught to communicate. At only 21 years of age, Sullivan showed great maturity and ingenuity in teaching Keller and worked hard with her pupil, bringing both women much acclaim. Sullivan even helped Keller write her autobiography.
Early Life
Anne Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. A gifted teacher, Anne Sullivan is best known for her work with Helen Keller, a deaf, blind and mute child she taught to communicate. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Ireland during the Great Famine of the 1840s. The couple had five children, but two died in their infancy.
Sullivan and her two surviving siblings grew up in impoverished conditions, and struggled with health problems. At the age of five, Anne contracted an eye disease called trachoma, which severely damaged her sight. Her mother, Alice, suffered from tuberculosis and had difficulty getting around after a serious fall. She died when Anne was eight years old.
Even at an early age, Sullivan had a strong-willed personality. She sometimes clashed with her father, Thomas, who was left to raise Sullivan and her siblings after their mother's death. Thomas—who was often abusive—eventually abandoned the family. Anne and her infirm younger brother, Jimmie, were sent to live at the Tewksbury Almshouse, a home for the poor. Some reports say that Sullivan also had a sister who was sent to live with relatives.
Tewksbury Almshouse was dirty, rundown, and overcrowded. Sullivan's brother Jimmie died just months after they arrived there, leaving Anne alone. While at Tewksbury, Sullivan learned about schools for the blind and became determined to get an education as a means to escape poverty. She got her chance when members from a special commission visited the home. After following the group around all day, she worked up the nerve to talk to them about sending her to a special school.
Star Pupil
Sullivan left Tewksbury to attend the Perkins School for the Blind in 1880, and underwent surgery to help improve her limited vision. Still, Sullivan faced great challenges while at Perkins. She had never been to school before and lacked social graces, which put her at odds with her peers. Humiliated by her own ignorance, Sullivan had a quick temper and liked to challenge the rules, which got her in trouble with her teachers. She was, however, tremendously bright, and she soon advanced academically.
Sullivan did eventually settle down at the school, but she never felt like she fit in there. She did develop close friendships with some of her teachers, including the school's director Michael Anagnos. Chosen as the valedictorian of her class, Sullivan delivered a speech at her June 1886 graduation. She told her fellow students that "duty bids us go forth into active life. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly, and set ourselves to find our especial part. When we have found it, willingly and faithfully perform it; for every obstacle we overcome, every success we achieve tends to bring man closer to God."