THEATRE + COMEDY

The Country Playhouse (voted through Houston Community Newspapers as Best Community Theatre of 2010) is proud to present an exciting new interpretation of The Miracle Worker. It will run from March 25 to April 9, 2011 and Jonathan Gonzalez, making his debut with the Country Playhouse, directs.

Helen Keller lives with her parents in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Struck down when a baby by an illness that leaves her blind and deaf – and therefore mute – the infant Helen becomes an object of pity to her parents, who proceed to spoil her “rotten”. By the age of six she has grown into an angry, wild, undisciplined child and in desperation the Kellers hire Annie Sullivan as governess to their daughter.

The Miracle Worker is based on Annie’s efforts to instruct her new pupil. After many battles, she teaches Helen discipline and language through the use of her fingers and the true “miracle” begins. This has a profound effect on everyone’s life and how they live it.

The play premiered on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre on October 19, 1959 and closed on July 1, 1961 after 719 performances. The cast starred Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke as Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller with Helen’s parents played by Patricia Neal and Torin Thatcher. The show won Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Direction (Arthur Penn), Best Actress (Anne Bancroft), Best Stage Technician (John Walters) and the Theatre World Award (Patty Duke).

Director Jonathan Gonzalez says, “…. this will be a unique production of The Miracle Worker in the intimacy of the space. We shall be utilizing some stylized, non-realistic techniques with sound and lights to bring the audience directly into Helen Keller's emergence from being deaf, blind and mute into a world of wonderful new possibilities.”