New theater company up for the challenge of Keller story

Actor and director Jim Heatherly of Bloomingdale always wanted to start a small theater company, but he thought he would create the theater first, then find plays to do.

Instead, the play found him — in this case, William Gibson's 1960 Tony-award winner about Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, “The Miracle Worker.” His Actor Factor Theatre Co. followed.

Heatherly had wanted to do the play for a long time, but, as they say in the business, the rights to the play were “tied up” before the 2010 revival of the play on Broadway. No one was allowed to perform it until the Broadway run was over.

Still, he applied for the right to do it, and as luck would have it, he asked at the very time the rights were suddenly available again.

“We got the rights,” Heatherly explains, “but we didn't have the theater company together yet. We didn't want to lose the rights, so it was dive head first and hope there are no rocks down there.”

This kind of risk taking is nothing new for Heatherly. He has spent his life jumping head first into things.

In his 20s he toured with a small local rock band. “We had a group called Crossfire,” Heatherly recalls. “We were a backup band. We were like Three Dog Night. We did a lot of work with Styx.” Heatherly says he even had a small, local hit, “Lovin' Situation.” Crossfire, however, did not follow Styx into the big time, and Heatherly eventually quit the rock world to raise his family.

Then about 12 years ago, Heatherly dove head first into theater when his teenage children told him he needed to “get a life.”

“I had a singing teacher who told me the same thing,” Heatherly says. “My teacher told me, ‘If all you are doing is singing on Sundays, you are wasting your talent.'”

Over the next dozen years, Heatherly acted in 60 productions and directed 10 shows.

“I love shows that rarely get done,” Heatherly says. “I did ‘To Gillian on her 37th Birthday.' I did the musical ‘Jekyll & Hyde' and I even got to talk to (‘Jekyll & Hyde' composer) Frank Wildhorn.”

In putting together his version of “The Miracle Worker,” he filled the show with actors he knew and had worked with. “You really need a good actor playing Helen Keller and a good actor playing her teacher, Annie Sullivan,” Heatherly says. “I met the little girl who plays Helen Keller (Christina Zaeske) while acting in a production of ‘A Christmas Carol.' She played my daughter and she adopted me as her other dad. I later played in a show with her when she played a ghost ballet dancer. I told her she would make a good Helen Keller.”

Naturally, when Heatherly got the rights to the play, he contacted Zaeske and offered her the part. The rest is history.

Heatherly still can't believe his dream theater is becoming a reality. “I have wanted to create Actor Factor for such a long time,” he said. “It has been a challenge. Don't get me wrong. I learned how to build a website, for example. And I couldn't have done it without so many people who helped.”

But Heatherly has been up to the challenge, because he is, in his own way, also a miracle worker.

"The Miracle Worker"

Runs Friday, June 10, to Sunday, June 26, at the Steel Beam Theatre, 111 W. Main Street, St. Charles.

<b>Tickets:</b> are $15-$$25.

<b>Information: </b>Call (630) 893-8362 or visit actor-factor-theatre.org.</I>