Louis Braille: The World at Your Fingertips

With an uplifting story and a vibrant score, this musical shows the power of a teenaged Louis Braille's belief and determination to change the expectations of the world. It is an ambitious musical with a strong story line. Young Louis Braille, blind since age 3, enrolls in The Blind School of Paris hoping to learn to read and write. He dreams of becoming a diplomat. When Louis protests broom-making class and exposes a fake display of reading at the annual presentation for donors, he nearly gets expelled. Thankfully, Marie deVries, an instructor, introduces him to music and supports his creative mind by arranging a meeting with the French captain who invented a rudimentary method of nightwriting for soldiers. The method's absurdity and impracticality are clear to Louis, but it gives him the springboard for a burst of creative genius. The result? The Braille system, a code to be scanned under the fingertips, opening a world of literature and musical notation previously closed to the blind. Strong roles for actors in the ensemble.