Featured: (From Left to Right) Charleston Stage Resident Professional Actor Maggie Saunders as Annie Sullivan and Charleston Stage Performance Troupe Member Marianna Folz as Helen Keller.
We take it for granted - speech, words, language, writing - but it really is a miracle when you think about it. Through language, our thoughts are turned into sounds, images (letters, words) that we can share with others. It's the miracle of human communication. That this even exists is a miracle unto itself.
So, what do you do when you have no language? What do you do when you have no form of communication? How can you function? Rather, how can you teach someone to function? Annie Sullivan didn't know either. She did know, however, that the only way to reach Helen Keller (a child who had been stricken deaf, dumb and blind before she could truly communicate) was through language. You teach her language, and the world opens to her. You teach her language; you teach her to see.
From an early age, most toddlers learn language by babbling, hearing and repeating words, but this path was not open to Helen. Still, Helen could smell, taste, and touch, and it was touch that Annie Sullivan turned to-specifically fingerspelling - a technique that had long been used to teach the deaf.
Deaf pupils with sight can see the fingers moving and making the signs and symbols. But being deaf, Helen could only feel them. Annie Sullivan realized, that if she could connect the fingerspelling to meaning, making words from the movement of fingers rather than from visible letters or signs, she might be able to get through to Helen. But Annie Sullivan had another special gift. This was the wisdom and insight to see that there was a bright little girl hidden inside the darkness and silence...a little girl she was determined to reach. Through a long process of trial and error, showcased so powerfully in The Miracle Worker, we see how Annie Sullivan and Helen struggle for understanding and how they unlock the miracle of language through fingerspelling. Words formed not with sound or symbols, but with a simple touch...an entire universe unfolding in the palm of a little girl's hand.
Helen Keller not only learned to communicate through fingerspelling, she later learned braille, and later still actually learned to speak, all because of the miracle Annie Sullivan gave her. Helen would be forever grateful for this gift and would always refer to Sullivan affectionately as "Teacher".
