Yes! Helen Keller really did perform on vaudeville stages for four years (1920-1924). I stumbled across this odd fact while finishing up my PhD (in 18th Century English literature) and tucked it away for further investigation. That investigation–into Helen’s motivations and the reaction of others to her short-lived but startling career move–became The Star of Happiness: Helen Keller on Vaudeville?!
Much of the script of the Star of Happiness quotes Helen’s eloquent words about her uniquely glamorous life as a performer, her unenviable frustrations at not being taken seriously as a politically engaged and often radical thinker, and her poignant thoughts about living life as “an unmated.” Furthermore, as I’m wont to do, I complicated Helen’s words with my own perspective. As a blind writer, performer and doctor of philosophy I melded irreverent humor with reverential admiration in a patchwork of biography, jokes, philosophy, and the sound and vision scapes that call attention to the joys and superficialities of sensory experience.
Five years later and I’m still wrestling with Keller’s words, ideas and identity…
I’m happy to report that I’ll be presenting a portion of my strangely fictionalized adaptation of The Star of Happiness in the fall at Queens Council on the Arts with Boundless Tales‘ own five year anniversary celebration.
So here’s to more Star of Happiness weirdness, where Historical fact and schoolyard humor collide in my autobiographical treatment of Helen Keller’s time on vaudeville. It may no longer be a one-woman, two-voice, three-act theatrical production, but it will still grope towards an understanding of the blind spectacle.
