Category: The Star of Happiness and the Helen Keller Project Blog

The Star of Happiness was first performed in July 2011 at the Under St Marks Theater as part of Horse Trade’s miniFRIDGE. Developed as a research and performance project, this one woman, two voice, three act play is a strange and wonderful amalgamation of my academic and performing lives, inspired and informed as much by books as by the mad mad artists of the East Village and Lower East Side.

The Helen Keller project Blog was conceived of in a conversation with the inimitable force that is Mark Fullmer who, when I said that I had done so much research on the subject that the performance could only hope to engage with a tiny portion of all the crazy shit I’ve learned since that fateful day when I happened to find a tiny paragraph that mentioned and then quickly dismissed Helen’s time on vaudeville, suggested that I create a blog. So, here it is the loosely autobiographical and quasi philosophical history of an idea.

Contemplating the Many Things Worse than Being Blind at the Helen Keller Forest Hills Tribute Mural

Thanks to a wonderful writer friend, Jess DeCourcy Hinds, I learned about The Helen Keller Forest Hills Tribute Mural in Queens, New York, where Keller lived for many years. Sadly, Keller’s home no longer exists. In its place stands the Reform Temple of Forest Hills at 71-11 112th Street, which was formerly 93 Seminole Avenue. That’s “where Helen Keller resided… Read more

#HappyBirthdayHelenKeller and Hello #DisabilityPrideMonth!

About 15 years ago I first learned that Helen Keller performed in vaudeville. As I discuss in There Plant Eyes, I was moonlighting as a performance artist with the Art Stars of the Lower East Side when I stumbled upon the delicious fact that Helen and Annie did the vaudeville circuit for 4 years (1920-24), I instantly knew it would… Read more

I Have A Fellow Feeling For Trump. He Seems As Blind As I Am, Essay 27 of #52essays2017

Helen Keller startled vaudeville audiences from 1920 to 1924 with her lefty politics. According to Dorothy Herrmann’s biography, Keller’s answers to current events questions from the audience such as “What do you think of President Harding?” had planned zingers such as “I have a fellow feeling for him. He seems as blind as I am.” For my title, I take… Read more

Helen Keller Quotes Explosion

You kneel on the floor with two loop pedals in front of you. Above you hangs a projected red curtain and an empty spotlight. you say, “Oh, fuck it,” and hit one of the pedals, which causes The Star of Happiness theme song instrumental interlude to play. “I was born with a degenerative eye disease called…” you hit the loop… Read more

Helen Keller Plays Vaudeville With You

Out of the dark, a jewel box scene materializes; Helen Keller plays vaudeville on this top-billed set. The handsomely appointed drawing room, brilliant and color-saturated, projects hugely: French windows overlook rolling hills and a sky that will shift from day to night; drapes puddle on the floor; The Apotheosis of Homer hangs on one of the brocade-papered walls, and a… Read more

INWARD VISIONS: Helen Keller Defends her Sense of Beauty

[These thoughts on aesthetics, understanding, poetry, beauty and the senses come from Keller’s 1908 book The World I Live In. “Inward Visions” is Chapter 9. You can read Chapter 6 on Smell HERE. The text has been hyperlinked, gently edited for apparent scanning errors and the odd British spellings Americanized.] ACCORDING to all art, all nature, all coherent human thought,… Read more