Director Rachel Helson knows the value of persistence.
When she was a child and four of her aunts were diagnosed with breast cancer, Helson was determined to help in some way. She used her passion for theater production to stage a benefit play in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Rachel Helson
Taking matters into her own hands at age 15, Helson produced and starred in two stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Together, the two shows raised $27,000 for the local chapter of the Komen For the Cure Foundation.
After she was accepted into New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to study Drama, Helson longed to extend Rocky’s run to raise money for cancer research.
“I didn’t know any better,” recalls Helson. “I thought, ‘well I want to do it again, but where do you put on a show in New York? Well, I guess Broadway.’ So I contacted a bunch of the theater owners. I knocked on doors, asked to speak to the head of the theater companies. They were saying, like, ‘who are you and why are you knocking on my door, child?’ Finally the Roundabout Theatre Company agreed to rent me the American Airlines Theatre for a night.”
She had help. The Roundabout Theatre Company, in contrast to most on Broadway, is a nonprofit venture that regularly rents its houses. Richard O’Brien, the author of The Rocky Horror Show, gave written permission to Helson to produce her version and waived the licensing fee. Most of the talent volunteered. Helson’s show was given one night―April 16, 2007―to raise as much as it could.
Her fearlessness paid off. Helson got her first Broadway credits for producing and acting. (She also played Janet, the lead role). Helson secured the rest of her cast by using IMDBPro to contact their representatives. She even got Neil Patrick Harris fly in from Los Angeles to play the narrator. The New York Times wrote about the show three days in advance. The production raised more than $60,000 through ticket sales and corporate sponsorship.
Before she graduated from college, Helson picked up two more Broadway credits. The latter was a producing credit on the play, Reasons To Be Pretty. An internship with Bernard Telsey, one of the nation’s leading casting directors and the co-founder of MCC Theater (where Reasons was being staged), led to a meeting with the show’s producers. She ultimately earned a Tony nomination for her work, making her the youngest person in Broadway history to be nominated for the award. “I did not come out of the womb knowing everything,” she insists. “I think I just fake it pretty well.”
If that weren’t enough, Helson is also an actress. She has appeared in episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Power. She also appeared on the Steven Soderbergh-directed TV series, the Knick. In fact, Helson credits acting on the series as inspiration for ultimately pursuing a directing path.
“Being able to watch [Soderbergh] was inspiring,” she says. “Getting to work and feel what it was like to be on that set, and be totally immersed in that world, was the gold standard. This is what I aspired to. So, I thought, I better get moving.”
Since transitioning her career from stage to screen, Helson has directed some movies for Lifetime. The second, How To Live Your Best Death, debuts later this month. Starring Alissa Filoramo (The Family Business, Nightmare PTA Moms), Helson describes the film as “a thriller about a life coach who gets a little too involved with one of her clients’ lives.”
Yet Helson’s interests are not limited to stage and screen. After she graduated from college, she and her mother Jan Helson co-authored a book for youth called The Global Game Changers. In it, a fictional team of superheroes recruit real-life kids to help change the world for the better by serving others. The idea for the book was sparked by Rachel’s own story of giving back to the Komen foundation by staging her production of Rocky. The universal lesson: by combining their unique talents with their passion, children can discover their own “superpower.”
The audience reception to the book led the Helsons to co-found a non-profit of the same name. Global Game Changers’ curriculum, which focuses on social-emotional learning through acts of service, is taught in 49 states and 13 countries.
Never one to slow down, last year Helson and actress Haskiri Velasquez (Saved By The Bell) shot a series of short educational videos at the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan. Those shorts, which transport viewers to the present-day Ground Zero site, are now part of GGC’s 9/11 curriculum for children, developed in concert with a grant from AmeriCorps. The curriculum is taught in schools across the country.
“The 9/11 Lesson developed by Global Game Changers, thanks to an AmeriCorps grant, utilizes activities and principles that are essential to educating younger generations about the events and aftermath of 9/11,” says Heather French Henry, former commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs.
For Helson, it’s powerful to be part of something that gives tools to children to help understand 9/11 in some way, which is so hard for anyone to grasp. “I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to use my talents to support a cause that I care about,” says Helson. “I’m thrilled that the videos that I directed for Global Game Changers are part of a larger curriculum that honors the heroes of 9/11.”
