ROGUE SPOTLIGHT: Linda Alper takes on a meaty role at RTC

By JIM FLINT for the Rogue Valley Times April 19, 2024

Linda Alper plays a villainous, selfish and deeply vulnerable woman in Rogue Theater Company’s “August: Osage County” May 1-5, but she does not see her as a one-note character. “I want to look for the surprises in her — how she is a mother, a wife, a woman suddenly alone, sick, desperate to survive,” Alper said. “I want to find the humor and the humanity, so it isn’t just a general wash of being abusive and stoned. That’s the trap, I think.”

Directed by former Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Henry Woronicz, the Tracy Letts play will be presented as a reading. Tickets for the four-day run are nearly sold out. The 13-member cast reads like a Who’s Who of OSF. In addition to Alper, who acted and wrote during 24 seasons at OSF, the list of actors includes Kjerstine Anderson, Denis Arndt, Rainbow Dickerson, Michael Elich, Michael Hume, Samantha Miller, James Newcomb, James Ryen, Barret O’Brien, Caroline Shaffer, Vilma Silva and K.T. Vogt. The play is semi-autobiographical. Letts explores themes of addiction, suicide and generational trauma from his own childhood in Oklahoma.

Best play Tony Award

The play won the Tony Award for best play, the Drama Desk Award for outstanding play, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding Broadway play, and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Alper says the level of preparation for a reading is less demanding than for a fully produced play. Even though rehearsal periods for conventional productions have become shorter, she memorizes the text before rehearsals start. “Not needing to do that for a reading is a huge prep difference,” she said.

In the play, when Violet Weston’s husband, Beverly, goes missing, estranged family members travel home to gather around his vitriolic spouse. Alper’s character, Violet, is the matriarch of the family. She has been diagnosed with mouth cancer and as a result has become addicted to several prescription drugs. Her addiction becomes more unstable as the play progresses. Alper, now a resident of Portland, has spent the last few months in Italy, “going to school and improving my Italian.”

Super-shy kid

She grew up in Southern California. “I was a super-shy kid. I think my parents were getting embarrassed,” she said. “So, when I was 8 or 9, my mother suggested auditioning for a community theater Halloween play, hoping I’d at least pick up some social skills. She was stunned when I agreed.” Alper got the leading role and never looked back.

In middle school, she spent a lot of time marking up her “Shakespeare Collected Works,” part of her parents’ “Great Books” collection, with stickers and colored pens. “That was my idea of fun,” she said. After the baptism by fire in the Halloween play, she was certain theater was where she wanted to be. “There have been times when I had doubts, but those insecure periods never lasted long.”

What brought her to Ashland? “I visited a friend who was working at the festival. I auditioned on a whim, then was hired for … gulp … the 1980 season.” It was everything she wanted in a theater company and exactly the kind of work she’d trained for at Julliard. She stayed for two seasons, then went back to New York City, returning to OSF a few years later.

Artists Rep residency

In Portland, Alper is an actor, playwright and resident artist at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland Center Stage. “Artists Rep is in a transitional place right now,” she said. “I’m very excited to see what happens over the next year or two. My dear colleague, Luan Schouler, is at the helm, and I strongly believe in her ability to make that theater thrive.” She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Taiwan and completed a Fulbright Specialist Grant in Pakistan.

She was awarded a U.S. Cultural Grant for which she devised a theater piece about terrorism and public space with Islamabad’s Theatre Wallay and Ithaca College. She brought 14 Pakistani artists to perform the piece at OSF and Artists Rep, serving as co-producer for their American tour.

Alper says she has been impressed by what RTC artistic director Jessica Sage has accomplished. “I told her I’d like to be involved and she asked me to this reading.”

What might people be surprised to learn about Linda Alper? “I’ve become kind of a loner, at least at this phase of my life — while still being a super-involved Jewish mother. And slightly nerdy.”

Next for Alper is another reading, at Artists Rep. “I get to play another crazy old lady in a play called ‘Keely and Du.’ So, I guess that’s my new niche — which I embrace with glee!”

For more information about RTC plays and to purchase tickets, see roguetheatercompany.com.