Visible Language Reviews
The Washington Post
“Helen Keller, played by the wonderfully expressive Miranda Medugno…”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/sign-language-and-song-in-visible-language-at-gallaudet/2014/10/29/89f524ca-5f8d-11e4-8b9e-2ccdac31a031_story.html
“…In the scene, the deaf and blind Keller (played by Gallaudet graduate Miranda Medugno, who is deaf) and Sullivan (played by hearing actress Sarah Anne Sillers) arrive in Washington. The two characters express their excitement and anxiety in a duet: Keller signs, and Sullivan sings words that are close to Keller’s but not identical.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/visible-language-captures-the-historic-dispute-in-dc-over-how-to-teach-the-deaf/2014/10/22/ef61ce4c-588c-11e4-9d6c-756a229d8b18_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/sign-language-and-song-in-visible-language-at-gallaudet/2014/10/29/89f524ca-5f8d-11e4-8b9e-2ccdac31a031_story.html
“…In the scene, the deaf and blind Keller (played by Gallaudet graduate Miranda Medugno, who is deaf) and Sullivan (played by hearing actress Sarah Anne Sillers) arrive in Washington. The two characters express their excitement and anxiety in a duet: Keller signs, and Sullivan sings words that are close to Keller’s but not identical.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/visible-language-captures-the-historic-dispute-in-dc-over-how-to-teach-the-deaf/2014/10/22/ef61ce4c-588c-11e4-9d6c-756a229d8b18_story.html
BroadwayWorld.com - Washington, D.C.
“…the shining light in the cast is Miranda Medugno, a recent Gallaudet graduate, as Helen Keller. Her remarkably expressive face and body language brings the charm, humor and poignancy to the story as only a 13-year-old can.”
http://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/BWW-Reviews-VISIBLE-LANGUAGE-from-WSC-Avant-Bard-Gallaudet-University-20141028#
http://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/BWW-Reviews-VISIBLE-LANGUAGE-from-WSC-Avant-Bard-Gallaudet-University-20141028#
DC Metro Theatre Arts
“…Ms. Keller is portrayed with charisma and delightful abandon by Miranda Medugno. Her show stopping rendition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” brought the audience to its feet with emotion.”
http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2014/10/28/visble-language-wsc-avant-bard/
http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2014/10/28/visble-language-wsc-avant-bard/
DC Theatre Scene
“…The battle between Bell and Gallaudet is personified in the arrival to campus of one Helen Keller (Miranda Medugno) and from this moment forward the plot diverges from being about the development of sign language at Gallaudet to being largely about Bell’s efforts to teach the famously blind and deaf Keller to speak in nine days in order to win a bet. This plotline leads to Visible Language’s worst and best moments, featuring an awkwardly reprised song about the wonders of being allowed to teach such a student, but redeems itself with a bravura climactic set piece for Medugno.”
http://dctheatrescene.com/2014/10/27/visible-language-wsc-avant-bard/
http://dctheatrescene.com/2014/10/27/visible-language-wsc-avant-bard/
Washington City Paper
“…The strongest turns came from a pair of deaf actors. Miranda Medugno makes Helen Keller an adventurous young woman full of impatience and curiosity..."
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/46481/visible-language-reviewed/
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/46481/visible-language-reviewed/
MD Theatre Guide
“Miranda Medugno’s interpretation of Helen Keller is authentic and impassioned. Her vibrant facial expressions bring out a certain liveliness in the Tadoma Method, (a method incorporated in which the individual who is deaf and blind is taught to read lips and speak by feeling vibrations on the face, placing their thumb on the speaker’s lips and fingers along the jaw line). I really appreciated Medugno’s focused intent in celebrating Keller’s feistiness as the enlightened intellectual. Medugno’s transition from an intense moment between her and teacher, Anne Sullivan (Sarah Anne Sillers) after a moving argument regarding her longing for her sense of freedom in being her free-spirited self to a lovely, passionate and light-hearted ballad, ‘I Have My Own World,’ flows beautifully within the language of Medugno’s facial expressions. Later in the show, Keller’s heart-warming interaction with the First Lady inspires a forward-thinking, progressive movement for women in modern society in which the first lady advocates for a college education for all individuals, no matter their disability in the musical number, ‘We as Women, Educated.’”
http://mdtheatreguide.com/2014/10/theatre-review-visible-language-presented-by-wsc-avant-bard-at-gallaudet-universitys-eastman-studio-theatre/
http://mdtheatreguide.com/2014/10/theatre-review-visible-language-presented-by-wsc-avant-bard-at-gallaudet-universitys-eastman-studio-theatre/
Kradical - Blogger
“However, Miranda Medugno puts in the other great performance as the thirteen-year-old Keller. At the post-show discussion (which was considerably more interesting than the play itself), Medugno talked about the challenge of the role being that it was before the Keller of The Miracle Worker, as she was still young and figuring out her place in the world. Medugno's performance is radiant, and she captures Keller's youthful curiosity and also how scary her world must have been, as she's startled every time she's touched..."
http://kradical.livejournal.com/2939537.html
http://kradical.livejournal.com/2939537.html
Titus Andronicus Reviews
DC Theatre Scene
“Medugno, meanwhile, provides the one anchor of heart and sanity amidst the murderous chaos – the straight man, if you will, staring out at the audience in incredulity and a kind of sardonic resignation. She lets us see the tragedy of her sign language-speaking Lavinia losing her hands, without slipping into melodrama. This is simply the world she lives in, and she cannot escape it; all she can do is shake her head at it. She is the constant reminder that absolutely none of what happens needs to happen.”
http://dctheatrescene.com/2014/06/02/fools-get-bloody-titus-andronicus/
http://dctheatrescene.com/2014/06/02/fools-get-bloody-titus-andronicus/
DC Metro Theatre Arts
"...Miranda Medugno’s Lavinia is great..."
http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2014/05/31/titus-andronicus-faction-fools/
http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2014/05/31/titus-andronicus-faction-fools/
Shakespeareances.com
"And so, Medugno's Lavinia soon leaves off expressing her own woe and, wearing a Buster Keaton stone-faced expression, waits out her dad and uncle carrying on. Finally, with her stumps, she disinterestedly tries to console them...Medugno emerges as a true star."
http://www.shakespeareances.com/willpower/onstage/Titus-05-FOF13-spoiler.html
http://www.shakespeareances.com/willpower/onstage/Titus-05-FOF13-spoiler.html
The Washington Post
"It is Titus’s daughter Lavinia who suffers most dreadfully in the carnage that ensues. The director has the fine notion of casting a deaf actress, Miranda Medugno, as Lavinia, in part because the question arises of how she might communicate the identity of her mutilators, who have cut out her tongue and severed her hands."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/with-titus-an-audience-sees-red/2014/06/02/c332b124-ea78-11e3-b10e-5090cf3b5958_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/with-titus-an-audience-sees-red/2014/06/02/c332b124-ea78-11e3-b10e-5090cf3b5958_story.html
Show Biz Radio
“…There is one major exception, Lavinia, the daughter of Titus, who is raped, then has her tongue pulled out and her hands cut off to keep her silent. The role is played by Miranda Medugno, a Gallaudet theater graduate who signs the lines she has before she is mutilated. (The perpetrators have a chilling moment where their realization that she communicates by signing motivates them to remove her hands.) After the graphic horror of the attack on her, she becomes a rather still, almost stoic figure, most notably in a scene where three other characters loudly wail and wallow in bathos on seeing her condition, while she remains seemingly unmoved.”
http://washingtondc.showbizradio.com/2014/06/review-fof-titus-andronicus-2/
“Actors who make strong impressions include Miranda Medugno as Lavina, the ultimate victim, who loses hands and tongue after she is raped. Medugno, who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Sign Language Education, brings her “silenced” character into dramatic light and intensity. She draws us to her with her entire being. She is the moral, non-comic center of Titus.”
http://washingtondc.showbizradio.com/2014/06/review-fof-titus-andronicus/
http://washingtondc.showbizradio.com/2014/06/review-fof-titus-andronicus-2/
“Actors who make strong impressions include Miranda Medugno as Lavina, the ultimate victim, who loses hands and tongue after she is raped. Medugno, who is pursuing a Master’s degree in Sign Language Education, brings her “silenced” character into dramatic light and intensity. She draws us to her with her entire being. She is the moral, non-comic center of Titus.”
http://washingtondc.showbizradio.com/2014/06/review-fof-titus-andronicus/