Written and performed by Leslye Orr
Age Recommendation: Ages 9+
Run time: 60 minutes. No intermission.

“Hand in Hand is, like every good work of art, about going beyond looking and listening…an imaginative inner seeing.” Mike Steele, Minneapolis Star Tribune

If you’re interested in booking a show for your org or group, please email info@dreamlandarts.com.

First performed in 1982, Hand in Hand is a play in which audience members experience a heightened awareness of their own senses. They are seated in a spiral configuration, asked to close their eyes, and brought in touch with the world of Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind, and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who was legally blind. A myriad of objects are passed around the spiral while actress Leslye Orr tells a riveting story inspired by the profound letters and witty lectures of the great educator and her spirited pupil. Orr, herself legally blind since birth, created Hand in Hand to share her belief in the “possibilities of disabilities.”

This workshop-performance has been presented for schools, colleges, at staff trainings for organizations such as Serve Minnesota (Americorps) and for human resources departments at places like the Walker Art Center and Carlson School of Management. In 2012, Leslye traveled to Lithuania, Latvia and Israel with Hand in Hand as a speaker and specialist for the U.S. State Department.