William Gibson’s enduring drama, The Miracle Worker, is based on the early life of a deaf, mute, and blind child who meets the teacher who awakens her intellectually. The classic story is based on Helen Keller’s autobiography. In this stage version of the story, Helen, without the means to connect her intelligence with the world she navigates, meets Annie Sullivan, the feisty teacher determined to awaken her young charge to learning. Sullivan begins by taming the feral Helen, realizing, as she says, "discipline is the way knowledge enters the mind of a child." The parents are delighted to leave matters at that since they now have a child who is controllable. Sullivan, however, recognizes that unless the child understands the world around her, she has been consigned to being an automaton, not a person whose intelligence can provide a life worth living.