photographs by Barry Wisdom /

Image by: Barry Wisdom In her last main stage appearance at Sacramento Theatre Company, 14-year-old Bella Bagatelos played the ethereal Ghost of Christmas Past in 2011’s production of “A Christmas Carol.”

The role demanded that the Christian Brothers High School freshman exude an all-knowing, divine serenity as she guides a lost soul to self-awareness.

Some 10 months later, Bagatelos is back on the main stage in “The Miracle Worker,” garnering raves in a part that’s almost the polar opposite – that of a young Helen Keller, the very real, 19th-century author/activist who we meet as a wild child, cloistered in her own mind due to a childhood illness that left her blind and deaf.

It’s Keller’s escape from a world of sensory deprivation through the heroic efforts of teacher Anne Sullivan that is the story of “The Miracle Worker," which continues through Oct. 28.

While it may seem to some that a role free from lines to remember, that relies on instinctual behavior, might be somehow “easy.”

But as Bagatelos, a member of STC’s Young Professionals Conservatory, has discovered, the intense focus needed to ignore audio and visual stimuli while delivering a very emotional (and physical) performance is anything but easy. In fact, it's a task beyond the abilities of many more-experienced, adult actors.

“I was really excited about doing this part because I knew it would be a challenge,” said Bagatelos, who came to the role with some knowledge of Keller, having written a third-grade school report about her.

Image by: Barry Wisdom

Unlike many of her adult peers, Bagatelos said she had no qualms about watching a movie adaptation of her show in preparation for the part. Seeing the DVD confirmed what she already knew, that “it was definitely different from anything I’d done before.”

That might sound a bit precocious if it had come from another young actor, but not in this case. Bagatelos has been performing since the age of 3, when she spontaneously got up on her feet and sang “God Bless America” at a political fundraiser attended by her family.

“She was always a shy kid,” said her mother, Jacqui, “but she was brave enough to stand up and do that.”

Her parents, Jacqui, a physician, and father Chris, a contractor, have been taking their daughter to live theater since she was 2 (a California Musical Theatre presentation of “Beauty and the Beast”). Her own theater debut came not too many years after that when she played an enchanted champagne bottle in the River City Theatre Company’s own production of “Beauty and the Beast.”

“She was probably on stage for five minutes, but she loved it,” said Jacqui.

A series of roles with Runaway Stage Productions would follow before she was cast in her first fully professional production: 2011’s “Oliver!” at California Musical Theatre’s Music Circus.

“That’s when she met a lot of kids from Sacramento Theatre Company’s Young Professionals Conservatory,” said Jacqui, who enrolled her daughter at the H Street company’s school for exceptional youngsters.

Image by: Barry Wisdom

She would impress her teachers almost immediately, including “Miracle Worker” director Greg Alexander, who had the opportunity to see Bagatelos play to paying crowds in STC’s 2011 productions of “Frankenstein” and “A Christmas Carol.”

“I’ve been teaching and directing projects with the YPC for the past four years, and had had such a great time watching the young actors grow and learn,” said Alexander, who added that Bagatelos is part of a “pretty sophisticated bunch” at the conservatory, including “Miracle Worker” co-stars Griffth Munn and Garrick Sigle, who share the role of James Keller.

“I work with them exactly as I would with seasoned adults, and they are all up to the challenge.”

There’s that word again – challenge.

“It’s really interesting,” said Bagatelos, “you can’t react to anything you hear, anyone who’s talking to you, you can’t watch yourself walking up stairs – there’s no way to communicate.”

“It was really hard at first to stay focused, to learn to tune everything out and get into the role more.”

It’s a very physical role, as the frequently frustrated Keller is prone to tantrums to convey every negative emotion. During each performance, Bagatelos is called upon to literally flail and fall, as well as to fight with co-star Brittni Barger, who plays Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan.

She may not have had lines to learn, but there is an enormous amount of choreography involving Keller’s physical outbursts.

“It’s really tiring, very exhausting,” admitted Bagatelos. “Greg actually brought in a fight choreographer, Scott Gilbert. I think Brittni’s gotten banged up the most – but she’s been cool about it.”

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Bagatelos credits Barger for making the intense rehearsal and performance schedule easier to navigate.

“Brittni is so fun,” said Bagatelos, who shares the role of Keller with fellow ninth-grader Courtney Shannon of Natomas Charter School. “She’s really great – an amazing actress. I’ve definitely learned from being on stage with her. She helps Courtney and I in so many ways. She’s so talented and so natural in this part, it makes the relationship between Helen and Annie feel really genuine.”

Though she said she is not convinced theater will be her career goal, she’s taking her current role very seriously and is exploring the emotional subtext of Keller, not just blindly (no pun intended) reacting to the situations in which she finds herself.

“Helen gets fed up, but she’s just trying to understand,” said Bagatelos. “She’s cautious in everything she does. She doesn’t understand, but she wants to. There’s a longing within her. It may seem like she’s not doing anything, but there’s so much energy involved.”

Not that her efforts have gone unnoticed, or unappreciated. In addition to the positive critical notices she’s received, Bagatelos and her fellow cast members have been regularly receiving heartfelt ovations.

“It’s interesting after the bows to see the audience so moved,” said Bagatelos. “It’s a happy ending, but it makes people cry.”

For tickets, call (916) 443-6722, visit the Wells Fargo Pavilion Box Office (1419 H St., Sacramento), or go online at www.sactheatre.org.

Image by: Barry Wisdom