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Becoming Helen Keller

Nick Adams
Liza Jayne Longenhagen and Betsy Hogg in THE MIRACLE WORKER

GL022018-web-extra.mp3
Web exclusive post-show interview

We're joined by Liza Jayne Longenhagen, she's starring as Helen Keller in Florida Repertory Theatre's current production of The Miracle Worker. She got her start earlier this year playing Scout in the theatre's production of To Kill a Mockingbird. As part of her research for the role, the fifth grader took a trip to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine with actress Betsy Hogg, who is playing her teacher Anne Sullivan in the show, as well as the play's director Maureen Heffernan. Both Hogg and Heffernan will join the show as well.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.