My AP students are rounding the bend on the school year and I assigned them one final out of class reading of their choosing, so I have been reading and rereading some of their choices. I really pressed some of them who have shown some weariness to look at plays as a source for their final reading. Here’s one I found in a Little Free Library that I think should work. It’s a classic that many of us read at some point or watched the movie version with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft.
Some notes here:
This was a copy I found in a Little Free Library and I believe the copy was owned by a teen assigned to read this. She seems very excited and engaged with the story based on her annotations. Her annotations stop after Act I. Uh oh.
There’s a significant portion of the play that takes places with Annie Sullivan in school outside of her private work with Helen that I had forgotten.
The parents really struggle at the beginning to figure out how to deal with Anne’s disabilities, and it’s pretty heartbreaking, even if they seem a little mean.
There’s a ton of stage directions here in this play, for obvious reasons, but it’s still a lot.
If you’ve read Helen Keller’s own writing, on which this play is clearly partly based on, the “miracle” here is even more stark, but also of course involves Helen’s own resolve and intelligence. Also not present in this play is Helen’s amazing activism and radicalism.