Tribute: William Gibson

William Gibson, best known as the man who wrote The Miracle Worker, died this week at age 94.

Gibson’s sequel to “The Miracle Worker,” “Monday After the Miracle,” was not a success, but I thought it was a fine play. I also have a special fondness for Two for the Seesaw, about a mismatched couple, and for his play about the young William Shakespeare, A Cry Of Players. It does not have the scope and audacity of “Shakespeare in Love,” but it is a very appealing story of a young writer who is torn between art and love and between passion and responsibility.

I loved Gibson’s comment about the subjects of his most famous play, included in the Washington Post obituary by Adam Bernstein:

“I like to fall a little in love with my heroines, and the title — from Mark Twain, who said, ‘Helen is a miracle, and Miss Sullivan is the miracle-worker’ — was meant to show where my affections lay. This stubborn girl of 20, who six years earlier could not write her name, and in one month salvaged Helen’s soul, and lived thereafter in its shadow, seemed to me to deserve a star bow.”