Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
January 8, 2006

'Miracle' team
Actresses form bond in roles as Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan

by Richard Duckett

It was just the second day of rehearsals for the Worcester Foothills Theatre Company production of "The Miracle Worker," but actresses Kelsey Bennett and Helen McElwain had already established what seemed to be a nice rapport despite their very different ages and backgrounds.

"We're getting along," 11-year-old Kelsey said in a tone that definitely registered enthusiasm. "It would be tough if we didn't," said McElwain, who at 35 has the voice of seasoned theater experience.

Kelsey and McElwain play, respectively, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in the Foothills production, which officially opens its run at 2 p.m. today.

It would be tough if Kelsey and McElwain didn't have a connection because the very nature of their roles means that the two performers ideally should have great faith and trust in each other.

"We have to absolutely trust each other," McElwain emphasized during an interview at Foothills with herself and Kelsey after a rehearsal had concluded. "There's a lot of physical movement. A lot of physical wrestling that happens that has to be planned out in minute detail."

William Gibson's Tony Award-winning play inevitably depicts the nonverbal communication with which Sullivan works her "miracle" with Keller.

Helen Keller was born in 1880 in northern Alabama. She could initially see and hear, but in early infancy developed a mysterious illness that permanently deprived her of both those senses. Gibson implies that her parents were kindly but tended to spoil Helen. Perhaps as a consequence, her behavior grew increasingly disruptive and out of control. Not wanting to send their daughter to an institution, Helen's parents turned to help from the Perkins Institute. The school referred them to Anne Sullivan - a poor, orphaned graduate of the institute, herself half blind. She became Helen's tutor, caregiver, and, as it turned out, miracle worker.

Helen's frustrations get acted out in the play as physical tussles with Anne. But Anne continues to make Helen touch objects and then spell the name of them into the palm of Helen's hand. Helen cannot make the connections at first, but one day Anne takes Helen to a water pump and pours the water over Helen's hand. Anne spells out the word "water" in the girl's free hand.

Connection made.

Something about this experience explained the meaning of words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in Helen's face that she finally understood.

Helen would become famous. She learned to read, write and speak, and became the first deaf/blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree when she graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904. She lived to an old age, dying in her sleep in 1968. Sullivan was her devoted companion and helper for many of those years.

"It's a lot of stage combat and movement," McElwain said of the interactions depicted between the two in "The Miracle Worker," which focuses on Helen's childhood. "For me, I feel, OK, I'm a lot bigger than her (Helen/Kelsey)." On the other hand, "That (physical superiority) can switch," McElwain noted. In short, Helen (and Kelsey) can put up a fight.

For Kelsey there are also distinct physical challenges in playing Helen. "It's hard to remember movement and not words," she said. Since Helen is mute through most of the play, Kelsey only actually says two words. And then there's the fact that she's portraying a child who was blind. Kelsey's vision is fine, but she has to see things differently when she's on the stage.

"I make sure that everything around me is melting away except for me and Annie."

Kelsey combines a sweet off-stage disposition with a maturity beyond her years. She lives with her family in Northbridge and is a student at Northbridge Middle School. She also attends the Jo Ann Warren Studio in Worcester. "I knew who Helen Keller was - that she was blind, deaf and (mute) ... but I didn't know her whole story - how her parents spoiled her to death," she said.

But although there is the "spoiled perception" of Helen, Kelsey wants to convey that she had a hard life and possessed tremendous inner resources. "She wasn't a spoiled rotten kid. I want to have people see and understand that Helen can learn - and learn through someone."

The chances that Kelsey and McElwain would be working together and perhaps learning from each other in a play might have seemed remote at some point. Kelsey's main focus has been dance with not much thought about acting until recently. She's been taking dance lessons at the Jo Ann Warren studio for several years. "I've been dancing for most of my life," she said.

McElwain said that acting was not her initial direction in life, either. In fact, she studied film production and directing at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

"But when I graduated, I ended up working in a video store. So I started taking acting classes."

Originally from the town of Harvard, McElwain now lives in Waltham. As a child she had a rather unpleasant lesson in the cruelty of children via Helen Keller - albeit inadvertently on Keller's part. "I got called Helen Keller a lot as a kid," said McElwain, who is a straight-forward, no-nonsense sort of person but also comes across as easy to get along with. "Which may have prompted my mother to get the book." She was referring to Keller's book, "The Story of My Life."

"There were other names that bothered me more," McElwain said of childhood taunting. "It seemed to me like a stupid insult, because there was nothing derogatory about her (Keller)."

Keller once wrote that "Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." McElwain said that one of things that impresses her about the story is "the whole human connection. In this Southern world of gentility and noncommunication, to have the human connection (between Anne and Helen) is powerful."

McElwain has never played Anne before, although she said she has auditioned for the role in the past. This is also her first time at Foothills.

So, too, for Kelsey. She said she has acted at Northbridge Middle School, mostly appearing in musicals, and has also taken theater lessons at the Jo Ann Warren Studio. It was via the studio that she went to auditions for "The Miracle Worker," which were held in Boston. This was the first drama she had auditioned for.

"It was scary," she said. "Acting is not my main thing. It was different not to be warming up my voice."

However, "it went well, obviously," she said. "This is my first big, big role."

Indeed.

The phone call from Foothills telling her she had the role of Helen came a few days after auditions had concluded. Her father initially took the call. "It was pandemonium," Kelsey said. "It was really breathtaking. I was like jumping all over the house."

After studying with the New Theater Conservatory in Boston, McElwain has found herself being cast lots of times in an array of productions that often win her excellent reviews. Still, she said that she is considering going back to school for another go at studying directing.

Kelsey said that working with a professional such as McElwain has helped inspire her to think of a career of performing professionally.

"I want to dance," she said of what remains her first priority. "Or something on the stage."

Did McElwain have any age advice for her young cast mate?

"Have another life. Get out and earn money in other ways. You have to know what the world is like or you won't be a good actor. Know what it's like to hate a job," she said.

That was typically candid and earnest, but Kelsey was appreciative.

They've forged their own connection.

"That's good advice," Kelsey said.

And McElwain had four more words for her.

"And keep slogging away."

`The Miracle Worker'

When: Through Jan. 29.

Where: Worcester Foothills Theatre Company, at the Courtyard off Commercial Street, Worcester.

How much: $26.50 to $31, depending on performance. Box office, (508) 754-4018.