The CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE At the University of Tennessee

PRESENTS

TEACHER GUIDE1

Teacher Guide Compiled by David Brian AlleyTABLE 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----------------------------------------------------------------------- 3From the Director------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4About the Playwright--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5Characters in the Play--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7Ivy Green: The Keller Home------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8Anne Sullivan----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13Questions for Discussion----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15Treatment of the Disabled--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16Learning to Communicate through Deaf-Blindness---------------------------------------------- 18The Perkins Institute---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20ASL Spelling Chart----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22Crossword Puzzle------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23Activities and Discussion Topics------------------------------------------------------------------- 24Suggested Theatre Vocabulary--------------------------------------------------------------------- 25

Discussion Questions about the Theatre----------------------------------------------------------- 26About the Clarence Brown Theatre---------------------------------------------------------------- 27

We look forward to seeing you andyour students at the theatre.

2

About CBT Student Matinees

The Matinees will begin at 9:30 am on October 7, 10, 15, & 17, 2014 in 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 theTheatre —Curiosity

ImaginationRespect for others

An open mind

What to leave behind —Food and conversation

Cell phones, pagers, noise-makers, etc.Backpacks

3

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

4

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 Gittel Mosca, 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

5

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.

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/william-gibson

6

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

7

IVY GREENBIRTHPLACE 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

8

Alabamian, an attorney and farmer. During the War Between the States, the Keller Home was used as a hospital.

********************

The Cottage

9

Nursery Bridal 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.

********************

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

********************

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.

10

********************The Kitchen Building

The Kitchen

11

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********************

The Bedroom that Anne and Helen shared upstairs in the Main House

12

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

13

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."

Anagnos helped Sullivan find a job after graduation. The Keller family had written him looking for a governess for their daughter Helen, who was deaf, blind, and mute. In March 1887, Sullivan traveled to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to work for the Keller family. Sullivan had studied the instruction methods used with Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind student she had known at Perkins, before going to Alabama.

Teaching Helen Keller

At only 21 years of age, Sullivan showed great maturity and ingenuity in teaching Keller. She wanted to help Keller make associations between words and physical objects, and worked hard with her rather stubborn and spoiled pupil. After isolating Keller from her family in order to better educate her, Sullivan began working to teach Keller how to communicate with the outside world. During one lesson, she finger-spelled the word "water" on one of Keller's hands as she ran water over her student's other hand. Keller finally made her first major breakthrough, connecting the concept of sign language with the objects around her.

Thanks to Sullivan's instruction, Keller learned nearly 600 words, most of her multiplication tables, and how to read Braille within a matter of months. News of Sullivan's success with Keller spread, and the Perkins school wrote a report about their progress as a team. Keller became a celebrity because of the report, meeting the likes of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Mark Twain.

Sullivan decided that Keller could benefit from the Perkins School's program, and the two spent time there off-and-on throughout Keller's adolescence. They also sought aid for Keller's speech

14

at the Wight-Humason School in New York City. When Keller's family could no longer afford to pay Sullivan or manage Helen's school costs, a number of wealthy benefactors—including millionaire Andrew Carnegie—stepped in to help them defray their costs.

Despite the physical strain on her own limited sight, Sullivan helped Keller continue her studies at Radcliffe College in 1900. She spelled the contents of class lectures into Keller's hand, and spent hours conveying information from textbooks to her. As a result, Keller became the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college.

Personal Life

Working with Keller on an autobiography, Sullivan met John A. Macy, a Harvard University instructor. Macy helped edit the manuscript, and he fell in love with Sullivan. After refusing several marriage proposals from him, she finally accepted. The two were wed in 1905.

Sullivan, however, did not let her marriage affect her life with Keller. She and her husband lived with Keller in a Massachusetts farmhouse. The two women remained inseparable, with Sullivan traveling with Keller on numerous lecture tours. On stage, she helped relay Keller's words to the audience, as Keller had never learned to speak clearly enough to be widely understood.

Around 1913 or 1914, Sullivan's marriage broke up. Macy went to Europe, but the two never divorced. Sullivan began to experience health problems, and Polly Thomson became Keller's secretary. The three women eventually took up residence in Forest Hills, New York.

Legacy

The trio struggled to make ends meet. In 1919, Sullivan played herself in the first film version of her life in order to gain more income. Deliverance proved to be a box office failure, and she and Keller ended up touring on the vaudeville theater circuit to earn money. They shared their story of triumph with fascinated audiences for years.

By the late 1920s, Sullivan had lost most of her vision. She experienced chronic pain in her right eye, which was then removed to improve her health. For several summers, Sullivan visited Scotland, hoping to restore some of her strength and vitality.

Sullivan died on October 20, 1936, at her home in Forest Hills, New York. Her ashes were placed at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.—a distinct honor, as it is also the final resting place of President Woodrow Wilson and other distinguished individuals. At her funeral, Bishop James E. Freeman said, "Among the great teachers of all time she occupies a commanding and conspicuous place. . . . The touch of her hand did more than illuminate the pathway of a clouded mind; it literally emancipated a soul."

Sullivan's story lives on through film and theatrical productions. Her work with Keller was immortalized in the play The Miracle Worker, which was later turned into the 1962 film starring Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The latest Broadway revival of the show debuted in 2010, and features Abigail Breslin as Keller and Alison Pill as Sullivan.

15

Courtesy of Biography.com

Treatment of the Disabled

Beginning with the 19th century, attitudes toward people with disabilities began to improve. This was aided by the construction of institutions specifically for the care of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, many continued to suffer in poorhouses and asylums.

Social Darwinists opposed providing aid to the poor and disabled throughout the 19th century.

The middle of the 19th century began to see progress in advocacy, as reformers like Dorothea Dix pleaded for improved care of the disabled.

The period from 1800-1950 is commonly known as “The Rise of the Institutions” era. "More than nine-thousand idiots, epileptics, and insane in these United States, destitute of

appropriate care and protection. Bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls, attached to drag-chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods, and terrified beneath storms of profane execrations and cruel blows; now subject to jibes, and scorn, and torturing tricks, now abandoned to the most loathsome necessities or subject to the vilest and most outrageous violations." – Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix prepared a speech for Congress, which Samuel Gridley Howe presented, since women were not allowed to speak in front of Congress at the time.

Dix’s speech requested that the U.S dedicate 5 million acres throughout the nation to building care facilities for the disabled.

Early institutions were created with good intentions, but often inhabitants suffered abuse and neglect due to overcrowding.

A doctor named Edouard Seguin (1812-1880) built upon early sensory training methods to develop new ways of teaching the disabled. His work began in France, but he later journeyed to the United States to work with Samuel Gridley Howe to develop schools for training those with disabilities.

In 1848, Dr. Howe, most well-known for directing the Perkins School of the Blind and educating Laura Bridgman, opened The Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth, an experimental boarding school in South Boston for youth with intellectual deficiencies.

At the time, reformers like Howe and Seguin were rare; most members of society believed that those with disabilities were largely unreachable.

Letter to Dr. Howe:

Dear Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe,I left an application at your office in Bromfield Street yesterday on behalf of James [Doe] who desires to have his son admitted into the Institution for Feeble-minded Youth. James is an

16

industrious man who has been employed as a gardener by my father and myself, more or less, for the last four years. His boy has grown to be exceedingly troublesome, escaping from home as often as possible and causing his parents much anxiety. Of late they have felt obliged to confine him in the cellar during the father's enforced daily absence. I beg you will give the case your kind consideration, assured that it is a worthy one and deserving prompt treatment.Very respectfully yours,

William [Doe] July 7, 1841Learning to Communicate through Deaf-Blindness: Laura Bridgman and

Samuel Howe

Until the nineteenth century, deaf-blind persons were considered unreachable and un-teachable. For it was thought that there was no way for the seeing and hearing world to communicate with them. The education of the deaf-blind Laura Bridgman by Samuel Gridley Howe at the Perkins Institution in Boston was thus recognized as an astonishing achievement, and heralded a new era for people with disabilities. For once it was proved that deaf-blind people were not, as a matter of course, mindless, once it was established that those who could not speak, hear, or see might still participate in human conversation and community, so too, it began to be more generally understood that blind or deaf persons could make a contribution and that it was certainly possible to provide education to these persons, rather than mere shelter. In 1829, Laura Bridgman was born with both her sight and hearing intact, but she experienced much illness during the early years of her life and by the age of four was entirely blind and deaf in addition to having very a limited sense of taste and smell. Before her eighth birthday, she was moved to Perkins and Howe commenced here ducation. The first step was to offer her objects labeled in raised print. Bridgman quickly learned to associate words and objects, but apparently without any understanding of their meaning. She could recognize words as belonging to particular objects and could form words that would be understood by others, but this was nothing more than a superficial process. She was able to remember and to imitate, but was not actually aware of words as meaningful symbols. After a number of weeks however, Howe observes he truth began to flash upon her: her intellect began to work: she perceived that here was a way by which she herself could make up a sign of anything that was in her own mind, and show it to another mind; and at once her own countenance lighted up with a human expression: it was no longer a dog or a parrot: it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits! I could almost fix upon the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her countenance; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome; and that hence forward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain and straightforward, efforts were to be used. (Dickens, American Notes (85)

Once Bridgman began to understand language as a symbolic device, her education progressed quickly. She was offered a set of raised-type letters and she would take pleasure in using these to identify objects placed before her. Once her vocabulary had grown to a certain level, about three months after her arrival at Perkins, Bridgman was instructed in and quickly learned to use the manual alphabet, a much faster and more efficient mode of communication than writing with raised letters. The following year was dedicated almost entirely to Bridgman’s practicing the manual alphabet, to responding to her eager queries about the names of all sorts of objects, and to offering her some greater sense of “the physical relations of things” (86).

Bridgman’s enthusiasm often led her to sign to herself, either practicing recently-learned lessons, or thinking  “aloud” as it were. She was soon able to converse fluently with the other children housed at Perkins, almost all of whom were blind, but not deaf. In 1842, the British writer Charles Dickens visited Perkins and marveled at Bridgman’s skill and at Howe’s remarkable talent as an educator. Dickens dedicates almost an entire chapter to Bridgman in his travel memoir, American Notes (1842).

17

Indeed, Bridgman soon became one of the most celebrated people in the world. She was visited by the great and the famous. She was written about extensively and, as Betsey Gitter observes in her recent biography of Bridgman, “at the peak of Laura’s popularity, in the 1840s and early 50’s, thousands of sightseers flocked to see her on exhibition days [at Perkins] and local guidebooks listed her as a major tourist attraction.” Despite the success of her education and her early rise to fame, Bridgman’s life may not be described as an entirely happy one.

As she grew older, Bridgman’s popularity began to fade and she began to strain against her highly restricted life — confined to an institution and regulated in virtually every aspect of her behavior and existence. She died in 1889, when she was close to sixty, discontented and lonely despite her outstanding achievement

18

The Perkins Institute, raised print, braille, finger-spelling, American Sign Language (ASL)

Begun originally as the New England Asylum for the Blind, the school which would later become the Perkins Institution was based on the idea that any blind person could learn to become a fully integrated, fully functional member of society. The school was first founded in 1832, which is typically considered the first year of the Victorian age, an era remarkable for its zealous social and institutional reform as well as for its astonishing technological progress; and the school’s founder and principal, Samuel Gridley Howe, may certainly be regarded as embodying the spirit and philosophy of his age. Having studied educational practices in the United States, in Britain, and in Europe, How ere turned home to Boston with very decided views on the education of blind people and with enormous energy for putting his methods into practice. He began the school with six students in his father’s Boston home but before ten years had passed, the Institution housed more than sixty students, had moved twice to larger quarters, and, through Howe’s tireless efforts, received tens of thousands of dollars for the pursuit of its highly successful educational mission.

Among Howe’s most important accomplishments was the production and distribution of a wide variety of raised-print books for the blind. While thwarted in his most ambitious goal, to arrange for raised-print editions of every book in print, Howe’s determination did succeed to the extent the Perkins printed more books for the blind than any other school in the world, distributing volumes throughout the United States as well as in England, Ireland, Holland, and India. Moreover, Howe contributed important innovations to the production of raised-print books, developing a new typeface and using thinner paper to create smaller, cheaper volumes that were also easier to read.

But despite Howe’s important contributions, he ought not to be considered with an altogether uncritical eye. His desire to educate the blind (and the deaf), for instance, may be admirable, and his great work in opening up education and opportunity for blind people should be lauded, but at the same time, Howe shared a common weakness of his time, failing to see blind people (and deaf people especially) as having real rights of self-determination. Although he undoubtedly improved the lives of those he educated, he may also be seen as oppressing and exploiting his students by his rigid institutional system and through his regularly exhibiting them to the public as part of his fund-raising efforts.

In addition, Howe’s work both as an educator and as a publisher of books for the blind would have been of greater value had he adopted language systems better suited to the minds he so desired to serve. The use of raised-print texts for blind people and of the manual alphabet for the deaf were extraordinary innovations at a time when blind and deaf people were generally considered uneducable, but braille and sign are ultimately more accessible tools and endow their users with much greater speed and flexibility. Developed by Louis Braille, a student at the Paris Institute for the Young Blind, in 1824,braille is a system of printing that uses combinations of six raised dots to correspond to printed letters, numbers, and notations. It was not approved for official use by that institution until 1847, but during the interval, students secretly taught the code to one another and privately adopted its use, it being the only form of

19

writing that blind students could use to communicate with each other without an intermediary. Though in its simplest form, braille corresponds letter-for-letter with printed matter, advanced braille readers and writers use a higher level system which employs many contractions and shortened forms, functioning ultimately as a kind of shorthand that enables blind people to read quickly and efficiently. But while his failure to employ braille may be regarded as an oversight, since the system was not yet widely known when he opened his school in Boston, Howe’s refusal to teach his few deaf students Sign was more deliberate and his rejection of this language system caused lasting harm not only to his own students, but also to the cause of Deaf education over the next century. Consolidated during the early decades of the nineteenth century, American Sign Language (ASL) was originally developed as an adaptation of a Sign language used in France’s most progressive school for the deaf. The language which ultimately became ASL was brought to the United States in 1816 and integrated into Deaf education here by legendary educator Laurent Clerc, who with Thomas Gallaudet established an enormously successful school for the deaf, which would go on to become Gallaudet University, the world’s only liberal arts college for deaf people. ASL is a rich, complex, and flexible language with its own unique grammar, syntax, and rules of practice. Essential to Deaf culture and communication, ASL is now recognized by scholars and linguists as fundamental to deaf education. But during the first 150 years that followed its inception in the United States, debate raged over its use. Viewed by many, including Howe, as a primitive kind of pantomime, Sign was often rejected by prominent people in deaf education in favor of “oralism,” a laborious and often unsuccessful approach that insisted that deaf people learn to use and understand spoken and written language only. Though advantageous for its potential as a tool to integrate deaf people into hearing culture and society, this emphasis on oralism prevented many deaf people from ever really acquiring any language, thus effectively robbing them of an education. At the same time, this insistence on oralism to the exclusion of Sign has functioned to exclude many deaf people from the rich and diverse cultural world of the Deaf. One of the long-term effects of Howe’s rejection of Sign is that Helen Keller, educated by Perkins alumna Anne Sullivan, never learned ASL and was thus excluded from the wealth of Deaf culture. Instead, she used finger-spelling, the use of the manual alphabet to spell out every letter of every word she “spoke,” for all her daily interactions.(Though Keller did learn to speak, her oral skills were never so great that strangers would be able to understand her without an interpreter.) It is difficult to imagine how cumbersome this must have made Keller’s everyday life, but to give some idea, it should be noted that such a system required Keller to proofread the galleys of all her books by having an interpreter spell every letter of her printed texts back into her hand.

Courtesy of Brooklyn Academy of Music

20

21

22

ASL

SPELLING

CHART

CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACTIVITY

1 2

3

4 5

6

7 8

9

10

11

12

13

Across1. how Helen recognized people4. meant she wanted ice cream7. how Helen showed her frustration10. the first word she understood11. the number of years Anne stayed with her12. caused Helen to become deaf and blind13. Helen's greatest asset

Down2. how Helen understood speech3. how she communicated with her family5. "The Story of My Life"6. reading system for the blind8. her teacher whose first name was Anne9. used to read Braille

                                                               WORD BANK:  FEVER,  FEEL,  SIGNS,  TANTRUMS,  SULLIVAN,  WATER,  SHIVER

BRAILLE,  BOOK,  DETERMINATION,  FIFTY,  LIP READ,  HAND, 

Courtesy of: Helen Keller Biography at gardenofpraise.com

FOR DISCUSSION

1. Discrimination against people with handicaps in the late 1800’s included such things as segregating people with a variety of

23

handicaps from the general population and placing them in asylums with little or no hope of improving their lives. Conditions were particularly sparse for the poor and for black Americans. Besides sight and hearing impairments, what are some of the kinds of handicaps people have today? How might those people experience a typical day in your school or town, particularly people with sight or hearing disabilities. What services have changed? How are accommodations different in communities and schools today than they were at the time in which Helen Keller lived? How important is a belief in their capacity to learn?

2. Imagine being blind and deaf. What might it be like to live without one or two sensory tools? How do we explore the experiences of living with tactile and olfactory sense organs as the only sources of information? We can ask a person who cannot see us what it feels like, and we can write a question to a person who cannot hear us, but how do we reach someone who neither can see us nor hear us? How frequently do persons with such qualities occur in the population?

3. Activity--Blind Man’s Bluff: Consider how Helen actually could sense that someone or something new was coming into their home just before Annie came. She could even sometimes tell who was near her by their smell. Blindfold a student and move furniture around so that they might be somewhat disoriented. Have students rearrange themselves from their original positions and see if the blindfolded student can guess each person’s identity.

4. The Keller home was neither a wealthy nor a poor home. The Kellers had servants and Captain Keller ran the Tuscumbia newspaper. But conditions following the Civil War included many changes in the social and economic life of southerners from before the war. What are the differences before and after the war for “middle class” families like the Kellers. What lifestyle qualities would allow someone to be considered middle class? Into which class did the Kellers fit? Consider, describe, and compare life for poorer southerners to the less unfortunate. Also include estimates of incomes, employment, and populations within both groups.

5. Research the life of former slaves in the southern United States following the Civil War and describe conditions and results, particularly as shown in newspapers of that day. Consider the conditions for the servants in the Keller story. How were their lives improved from those of former slaves, if at all?

24

Courtesy of The Great Midwestern Educational Theatre Company

Suggested Theatre Vocabulary

Director: The person in the theatre who is ultimately responsible for every element of the finished production. The director, usually working from the script, supplies the finished production. The director, usually working from the script, supplies the central ideas that define the world of the play, that help to describe its “look” as depicted by its set, costume, and the lighting design, and helps the actors’ interpret their roles.

Production Dramaturg: The person in the theatre who is responsible for preparing the text of the play for performance. He or she may also compile research on the production and different aspects of the play in order to help those involved in the production and/or the audience better understand the piece. He or she has direct and intimate knowledge of the script – its composition, organization and progression of action. During rehearsals, a dramaturg helps the production remain in line with the vision for the production. A dramaturg often engages in “audience dramaturgy” which may involve producing the program and/or audience education (such as this Teachers’ Guide) and other community outreach.

Scene Designer: The person in the theatre responsible for creating the look of the places in which the play occurs. Sometimes the set designer works in a realistic mode, attempting to capture the actual look of a place. More often, in the twenty-first century, set designers create a setting more theatrical than realistic, that evokes a certain feeling rather than depicting the actual look of the place during a particular time period.

Costume Designer: The person in the theatre responsible for designing the costumes for the characters in the play. Sometimes the costume designer tries to create costumes that capture the actual look of the time period, but at other times he or she creates costumes that are more theatrical than realistic, that evoke a certain feeling rather than reflecting an actual style or period.

Lighting Designer: The person in the theatre responsible for designing the lighting of the play. By using certain colors of lights and sometimes a spotlight, the lighting designer can create a certain mood or even let us know whether it is daytime or nighttime during certain scenes in the play.

Sound Designer: The person in the theatre responsible for designing all the sound effects, including all incidental music, in the play. The sound designer can create certain moods and tones at different times in a production, including giving us clues of the era in which the production is taking place.

Stage Combat Director: The person in the theatre responsible for choreographing and directing all the fights in the play. A stage combat director is usually nationally certified. He or she teaches the actors how to stage wrestling/sword/gun/fist or any kind of fights so that they look real to the audience. The Combat Director also teaches the actors about different weapons and the safe use of them on and off stage, around other actors and the audience. He or she works individually with the actors and is present at every rehearsal to make sure all the fights remain safe and to answer any of the actors’ questions.

25

Discussion Questions about the Theatre

1. Had you ever been to a theatre before visiting the Clarence Brown Theatre? If so, what things were different? What things were similar?

2. What things do you remember seeing during your visit to the Clarence Brown Theatre? What do you remember about the lobby? The seats? The stage? The lights? The set?

3. What different things did the set do? Did it change? How do you think the people backstage made the set work?

4. What do you think it was like for the actors to act in this play? What do you think it would be like to rehearse a play? How do you think the actors memorize all of their lines?

26

About the Clarence Brown Theatre

The Clarence Brown Theatre Company is a professional theatre company in residence at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Founded in 1974 by Sir Anthony Quayle and Dr. Ralph G. Allen, the company is a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and is the only professional company within a 150-mile radius of Knoxville. The University of Tennessee is one of a select number of universities nationwide that are affiliated with a professional LORT theatre, allowing students regular opportunities to work alongside professional actors, designers and production artists.

The theatre was named in honor of University of Tennessee graduate, Clarence Brown, the distinguished director of such beloved movies as The Yearling and National Velvet. In addition to the 575-seat proscenium theatre, the CBT’s facilities house the costume shop, electric department, scene shop, property shop, actor’s dressing quarters, and a 100-seat Lab Theatre. Generally used for classroom activities and auditions, the Lab Theatre is also home to many student productions, sponsored by ACT (All Campus Theatre). The Clarence Brown Theatre also utilizes the Ula Love Doughty Carousel Theatre, an arena theatre with flexible seating for 350, located next to the CBT on the University of Tennessee campus.

The Clarence Brown Theatre has a 12-member resident faculty, headed by Calvin MacLean, department head and producing artistic director, and 25 full-time management and production staff members. The CBT is also served by a 40-member Advisory Board, which supports our production efforts. Comprised of leaders from the local corporate, arts and volunteer community, the Advisory Board members provide guidance in strategic planning as well as fund-raising for scholarships and artistic endeavors.

The mission of the Clarence Brown Theatre is to: 1) Produce plays, both classical and contemporary, which will stimulate, educate and entertain audiences, providing them with memorable theatrical experiences; 2) Provide professional experiences where acting and technical students may gain practical experience and professional career credits; and 3) Serve our community through involvement in outreach programs which touch young audiences, special populations and other multi-cultural groups.

The CBT strives to select plays each year that will expose audiences to new and meaningful theatrical experiences, featuring a mix of classical and contemporary plays, new plays and North American/English language premiers, musical productions and international theatre projects. The CBT productions will include both professional (equity) actors and students of theatre.

27