Helen Keller, a muller marabilla?

The Galician company Chévere is now delving into the personality of the American activist Helen Keller, a pioneer in the struggle for equality, social justice and dissidence at the height of the ‘American miracle’.

The new project of the Galician company Chévere explores the possibilities of integrating oral language and sign language (LSE) into the same work at the same level to dismantle the myth of Helen Keller and discover the forgotten and hidden facets of the life of this deaf-blind American activist. The experiment of integrating two languages of such a different nature questions one’s way of doing theatre and confronts listeners with the reality of deaf people, their language, their culture and their marginalization. In addition, in order to make the work equally accessible to blind people, the audio-description system is offered in all functions (limited units).

Born in Tuscumbia (Alabama), Helen Keller became a world celebrity being, according to official sources, the first deaf blind person to obtain a university degree in 1904 at Harvard, after a hard learning process since the age of eight. At least this is the part of his life that is fixed in the collective memory, as an exemplary model of overcoming disability. And from what is known, most of her writings end up rescued as simple motivational aphorisms. But by researching several American digital archives, other disconcerting facets of her life are discovered, which are systematically hidden. And most surprisingly, over the last few years a campaign has been spreading on social media claiming that Helen Keller’s story is false, including a change.org petition to remove her from history.