Who should play Helen Keller?

A casting controversy erupted on Broadway last month when the producer of the forthcoming revival of William Gibson's The Miracle Worker hired the Academy Award nominee Abigail Breslin to play the young Helen Keller. The show's producer, David Richenthal, explained that he "wanted a star" to help recoup the production's $3 million cost.

The problem? Unlike Keller, Breslin can see and hear fully. And Richenthal's refusal even to audition an actress who shared Keller's condition outraged advocates for inclusivity, including the Alliance For Inclusion in the Arts. Earlier this year, that group demanded that the producers of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter fire non-impaired actor Henry Stram— who was cast as the deaf character Singer— and replace him with a deaf actor.

According to these advocates, casting the disabled in disabled roles is not about money or celebrity, but about creating better art. Linda Earle, board president of the Alliance For Inclusion in the Arts, argued on the New York Times website that her organization "support[s] artistic freedom, and do not seek to supplant artistic vision with a "'PC' agenda. We never have and never will advocate for anything but the highest artistic standards… there are well trained, gifted artists who are also disabled or deaf, and we believe that they should be given the opportunity to compete for roles— particularly where their specific experience may add a dimension and authenticity to its interpretation and potentially expand the creative, artistic possibilities of the production." [Emphasis mine.]

I'm not convinced that a blind, deaf or blind-deaf actress could add to the authenticity or artistic possibilities of a play like The Miracle Worker. At least not simply because she's blind or deaf.

King Lear? Marie Curie?

The entire premise of theater as an art form rests upon the audience's suspension of disbelief. Everyone understands that the actor playing Lear was never crowned king, and that the actress playing Marie Curie might know nothing about science. Unlike a diorama at the Academy of Natural Sciences, we know from the opening curtain that the production will offer a recreation of reality, not reality itself.

To be sure, accurate Irish lilts might encourage greater suspension of disbelief in a Martin McDonough play. And some might question the wisdom of casting a heavy soprano as the tuberculosis-suffering Mimi in La Bohème, simply because an audience might not fully engage the opera's story if they're wondering why she hasn't wasted away a bit more.

But authenticity can only do so much to enable the suspension of disbelief. Should the Wilma have cast only women from a war-ravaged country in Scorched? Should Philadelphia Theatre Company have picked a developmentally disabled woman to play Clara in The Light in the Piazza? Should Lantern Theater have restricted its casting call for QED to Nobel prize-winning physicists?

This argument for "authentic art" itself rests on a very narrow— and false— definition of mimesis, one of the goals of art that Aristotle defined in the Poetics. Contrary to widespread belief, mimesis doesn't involve imitating nature; it's more aptly defined as "inventively constructing" or "re-imagining" reality. By that definition a mimetic art could depict Helen Keller as neither blind nor deaf without suffering artistically simply for being "inauthentic."

Portraying Johnny Cash

Advocates for auditioning deaf-blind actresses for the role of Helen Keller argue that an actress with the conditions Keller suffered would (or at least could) enrich the artistic experience by delivering a better performance because of this shared condition. "A deaf or blind actress would be able to imbue the role of Helen with her experience," Sharon Jensen, executive director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, has argued.

For example, the former substance abuser Joaquin Phoenix delivered a phenomenal performance as the former substance abuser Johnny Cash in the film Walk the Line. But Phoenix's battle with alcoholism could only inform his portrayal of the role if he already possessed the necessary acting ability to convey his experiences.

A blind-deaf actress wouldn't gain an advantage in playing Keller merely because she is disabled. At best, simply sharing Keller's disability would only enable her to portray her own experience as a blind-deaf woman, which isn't necessarily Helen Keller's experience.

Philadelphia's Amaryllis Theatre— which is also committed to the goals of inclusivity and accessibility for the disabled— has proved this point on two occasions. Two years ago the blind actress Pamela Sabaugh delivered a mesmerizing performance as the blind title character in Molly Sweeney— because she's a good performer. Conversely, the blind actor Lynn Manning, playing the blind character Pozzo in the same company's recent production of Waiting for Godot, failed to inhabit Pozzo's role successfully.

The "'shared experience' fallacy

This whole assumption that "shared experience" informs a role rests on a narrow view of performance— a warped understanding of method acting. Perhaps more important, it leads to a counterintuitive result.

If it's really true, as advocates for blind-deaf casting argue, that a person who has suffered a condition could better convey the condition, then it should follow logically that there is something about being blind-deaf that a sighted, hearing person cannot understand. But if that's the case, then casting a blind-deaf actress can't enhance the audience's experience— because, by definition, blind-deafness can't be directly comprehended by anyone who doesn't suffer those conditions. If anything, this is an argument for hiring Abigail Breslin to play Helen Keller— because Breslin can better communicate with an audience that's overwhelmingly neither blind nor deaf.

Certainly it's true, as advocates for inclusivity argue, that handicapped actors can't develop the necessary acting skills unless they're given more opportunities to perform. But nothing they've said so far persuades me that casting a blind-deaf actress as Helen Keller will necessarily give me a better theatrical experience.♦


To read esponses, click here and here.