Going into year 55 on Colorado stages, Persoff still pushing the speed limit

Legendary local stage actor Deborah Persoff is a little bemused by our peculiar societal attitudes about aging.

“Why is ‘age’ such a stigma,” she wonders, “when a long life is what we all wish and fight and scrape for?”

Persoff has acted, clowned, deadpanned and, yes, scraped her way to a glorious age 77, which has landed her at a numerically fortuitous moment in her life. She was 22 when she moved to Colorado and now, at 77, she is beginning her 55th year as an actor on Colorado stages.

“Those are all double numbers – and double numbers are lucky,” she said on the eve of opening her latest greatest challenge: Starring as Eleanor Roosevelt (and every other character) in a solo play called “Eleanor,” playing Mondays through Wednesdays all this month at the Vintage Theatre in Aurora.   

“I loved and admired Eleanor Roosevelt,” said Persoff. “She was my favorite First Lady because she became who she wanted to be.”

Persoff grew up in Philadelphia loving radio with her violinist father and pianist mother – who, to give you an idea of her commitment and intensity, broke both her thumbs playing Rachmaninov.

“I was 9 years old when I played the Mad Hatter,” said Persoff. “That can be a telling statement of my life,” which she describes as “a quiet, intense, terrific learning experience.”

She moved to Colorado in 1969 with her husband, Mike, now 87 and an aficionado of the Japanese martial art known as aikido. Her first show in Denver was at the downtown Changing Scene – a storied but now closed theater on Champa Street.

“I was the fifth narrator on the left, which meant that I sat in a chair, opened a book and just babbled. Everyone who paid their dues in those days had to work at the Changing Scene,” said Persoff, who has played a lot of iconic women over the years since.

Like Glinda in the Bonfils Theatre’s 1971 production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Looney-tune Edith Bouvier Beale in Vintage’s 2014 “Grey Gardens.” Pill-popping matriarch Violet Weston in Vintage’s 2017 “August: Osage County.” Queen Elizabeth II in Vintage’s 2018 “The Audience,” and the far spicier Queen Flirtnude in the late Playwright Theatre’s 2007 staging of "Diddley Sqwat." (Her husband’s name in that story was King Naughty*ss.)

And now she is playing Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving First Lady in American history. A champion of society’s underdogs, an advocate for refugees and the passage of anti-lynching legislation, and a vocal opponent of the internment of Japanese Americans.

She was, in effect, the first-ever activist First Lady. A woman who, in another century, might have made a pretty good president herself. 

“When people hear the name, they might say, ‘Oh yes, the wife of Franklin Roosevelt,’” Persoff said. “But people of a certain age certainly admire her. They admire her value system, her endurance, her sense of humor, her ability to avoid anything adversarial. She stood on her own at a time when that wasn't done. Women are still fighting for equality everywhere we look, but Eleanor led the way. She made it happen.”

She made it happen even though her husband cheated on her till the day he died. She traveled widely, writing for magazines and newspapers, appearing on the radio and essentially serving as FDR's polio-stricken legs.

When Persoff was handed playwright Mark St. Germain’s script, she didn’t think twice about accepting the challenge – or whether her age should be a factor.

“I want to stay active in something that has gratified me since I was a young girl,” said Persoff, who is a proponent of the treadmill for exercising her body. Acting, she said, is exercising “the treadmill of my mind.”

“Eleanor” launches Vintage Theatre’s new foray into intimate theater offerings in its Berg-Wilson Cabaret Stage, which is actually the lobby of a theater that holds three performing spaces.

Persoff hopes audiences walk away knowing that Roosevelt lived a rich life, uplifting people the best she could along the way.

“I think every time I’m on stage, I’m hoping that someone walks away saying, ‘That was worth my coming. I'm glad I was here,'” she said. “It's a sense of communion that I only get in a theater. It's like meeting a new friend.”

But memorizing a 90-minute play, with no co-stars? That can be terrifying for an actor at any age.

“I never think, ‘Am I too old for this?’” she said. “If there's an appeal, I'm going to do it. To me, it’s simply telling a story, And in this case, I have the luxury of telling the story of a great woman and the people who touched her life. And that makes the quest even more enticing.

“I've had the luxury of performing two other one-woman shows. So when people ask, ‘How do you remember everything?’ the answer is, of course, it always changes. A play is a living, breathing, fleeting wonder that changes every day with the responsiveness of the audience and the weather and timing and all of that.

“But the thing is, I am never alone. I have all my other characters to call upon. They're all there with me, and they support me.”

A decade ago, Persoff was the president of Vintage Theatre’s board of directors. Now, she contributes to the cause by writing a personalized thank-you note to every single person who donates money to the theater, which recently struck a deal to purchase its building at 1468 Dayton St. from the city of Aurora. This week, she has eight thank-you cards to send.

“I want to do that, because my mantra is to lead with kindness and to always say thank you,’ she said. “It doesn't cost anything, but boy, it feels good to do it.”

It would be hard to name five established stages in Colorado that Persoff has not performed on since 1969, from Denver to Fort Collins to Pagosa Springs. “I do all four sides of the I-25 corridor,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll go anywhere.” 

After 55 years of going everywhere, Persoff is the equivalent of Colorado stage royalty. After all, she has played two queens – and now a First Lady. To many, she is simply “La Persoff.”

“When Deb and I are in the lobby at Vintage Theatre, there are always people stopping us to talk with her about how much they have loved her in six previous performances,” said company Artistic Director Bernie Cardell. “And there are thousands of people just like her – a long line of happy theatergoers who feel blessed to have experienced her talent over the years.”

Even since receiving the Colorado Theatre Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, Persoff hasn’t given much thought to her place in Colorado theater history.

“My place is on the stage,” she counters. "And that is a place of joy.”

If there is a legacy, she added, it is one of absolute gratitude.

“The first audition I ever had in Denver was for a production “Around the World in 80 Days” at the Bonfils Theater,” she said. “Maybe that's what I'm feeling today. I feel like I’ve been going around the world having the chance to play all these wonderful women I’ve had a chance to portray. I’m grateful to each and every one of them, and they all still live here inside of me.”

This is also the Persoffs’ 55th year living in their Denver home, where the couple raised two children and have no intention of ever leaving.

“Because all our memories are entrenched in each piece of brick and mortar,” she said. “And I have quaking trees –  they'll start quaking as I walk by. It's really exciting. It means they're still here. And I'm still here, too.”

And she’s not going anywhere – except to her next gig. Why?

“Because dreams have no expiration date,” she said.