published 10 January 2012
Helen Keller’s legend is part of the American consciousness. Famously deaf and blind by her nineteenth month, she overcame the silent darkness that could have cursed her to a lifetime of lonesome misery and in the process became a global symbol of triumph over devastating circumstances. Today, what most of us know about her is summed up in “The Miracle Worker,” that oft-produced play and film which ends with teacher Annie Sullivan’s breakthrough and little six-year old Helen speaking her first word.
Michele-Leona Godin has written “The Star of Happiness:Helen Keller on Vaudeville?!” as an examination and celebration of Helen’s life beyond that childhood moment. Godin employs the use of video and image projections (expertly curated and designed by David Lowe), her own vocal recordings, and thoughtful research to bring Helen to life not only as that icon of survival against the odds, but also as a real human being.
As Godin is a regular adjunct and occasional faculty at NYU, the evening aptly begins as an informative and engaging lecture on Keller’s personal history and significance in shaping modern society’s view of the disabled. Suddenly, the mean and careless voice of what sounds like a hateful playground bully booms from the speaker, interrupting the talk with crass, malicious, and ,to say the least, politically incorrect jokes aimed at blind people, deaf people, and Helen Keller herself (of the Why-did-Helen-Keller-cross-the-road variety).
The lone spotlight darkens. An awkward discomfort descends upon the house as Godin appears to fluster and become frustrated at having to defend her subject against the cruel jeering. (Awkward, too, because the audience was populated by a number of blind people on the night I attended.) In the small, black box style Kraine Theater, in total darkness, hearing loudly and clearly these fragmented, hate-filled ramblings, one is transported into the experience of the disabled and victimized, the blind spectacle. In that moment dripping with pathos Godin reveals her lecture as true performance art.
In the second act (there are three), Godin emerges in a shimmering gown and recreates Keller’s appearances on the Vaudeville circuit. She answers the questions of curious onlookers and defends Keller’s detractors who call her a sell-out or a side-show. Practicality, Godin reminds us, is the reason Keller took to the Vaudeville stage: “There weren’t many jobs available in 1920 to a deaf, blind woman.” She goes on to further humanize her subject with clues about Keller’s sex life and reports of her rather voluptuous figure and how Vaudeville audiences responded to it. One of the evening’s most revealing moments is the reading of a letter that Keller wrote at age forty-two to a would-be suitor.
The show features the song “Star of Happiness” (newly recorded by Christina B.) that was written for Keller’s Vaudeville act, and where the show gets its title. (In one of many humorous moments, Godin does acknowledge how cheesy the title is.) She also uses what she calls an avant-accordion, a device used to record elements of a song, loop them, and layer them right there on stage. Though she had technical difficulties during the recording, the song nonetheless served as a reverberating and poignant soundtrack to the show’s final moments.
By introducing elements of her own life into the story, Godin--who herself has a degenerative eye disease--has given the show a presence and urgency without which it could have descended into mere idol worship. She channels Keller not through impersonation, but through her own experience, which forces the observer to confront his own ideas and perceptions of blindness, deafness, and what it means to fully live a life.
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