Coterie Theatre opens a streamlined production of ‘The Miracle Worker’

The Coterie has a record of taking established plays and musicals and re-imagining them for young audiences.

The nationally recognized children’s theater at Crown Center is doing it again, with a classic drama that was written for live television, then became a Broadway play and later an award-winning film.

William Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker” tells the story of Helen Keller, who lost her vision and hearing when she was a toddler, and her relationship with Annie Sullivan, the iron-willed teacher who helped her learn to speak and read.

Jeff Church, who is staging the show with help from associate director Daria LeGrand, said the Coterie performance will run about 70 minutes. Headlining the multi-ethnic cast are Vanessa Severo as Annie and young Josephine Pellow as Helen. Both were seen in the recent Spinning Tree production of “West Side Story.”

Church thinks the Coterie production represents a first in at least two ways: It will have two American Sign Language interpreters at each performance for deaf viewers, and supporting actors, when off stage, will perform as audio interpreters, describing the action for blind theatergoers.

In addition, Church said, he and his design team opted for a stripped-down scenic style. The actresses will wear rehearsal skirts, and the dining room table — scene of an epic food fight between Helen and Annie — will be represented by a piece of plywood on sawhorses.

Church called it an egalitarian approach.

“In a way the blind and deaf patrons would have no less advantage than other theatergoers,” he said.

LeGrand, who has established herself locally as a talented actress in productions at the Living Room (she was also in “West Side Story”), played Helen about seven years ago in a production of “The Miracle Worker” in Denver.

“She is a ‘Miracle Worker’ expert,” Church said. “She’s much tougher on the actors than I am.”

Specifically, Church put LeGrand in charge of staging the food fight, a physically intense confrontation that in most productions becomes the show’s theatrical centerpiece. Church said they won’t use real china — nobody wants pottery shards flying into the audience — but it will be a high-decibel sequence.

“We set the table and wreck it three full times at each performance,” Church said. “So that dining room table really gets a beating. … We’re not breaking china, but it’s very loud — screams and grunts and yelling and lots of stomping. (Helen) causes noise to get attention so people will give her what she wants. Sometimes the audio describers have to look for an opening.”

In addition to Severo and Pellow, the cast includes Walter Coppage, Jennifer Mays, Tony Pulford, Dianne Yvette and Ai Vy Bui.

The show matches Severo, a seasoned professional and one of the city’s most respected actors, with the relatively inexperienced Pellow, but Church said you’d never know it by watching.

“Josephine is just a trouper,” he said. “She has the determination, and she’s not afraid of Vanessa.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 4:00 AM.