Linda Bove

Linda Bove is a Deaf American actress born in Garfield, New Jersey, to two Deaf parents. She has one hearing brother, Michael. As a child, Bove attended St. Joseph School for the Deaf in the Bronx, New York, before transferring to Marie H. Katzenbach School for the Deaf in Trenton, New Jersey, where she graduated in 1963. She went on to study library science at Gallaudet College, now Gallaudet University, where her involvement in theatrical productions sparked her interest in performance. Among the productions she participated in at Gallaudet were The Threepenny Opera and poetic characterizations drawn from the Spoon River Anthology. During her senior year, she enrolled in a Summer School Program at the National Theatre of the Deaf.

Bove's Broadway career spanned from 1970 to 1980 and included appearances in Songs From Milk Wood and Children of a Lesser God, the latter of which she starred in. She also performed as a member of the National Theatre of the Deaf, which was founded in 1967. In 1979, she traveled with the NTD on a 30,000-mile world tour, with a particularly notable stop in Japan, where their production was attended by the royal family and the company was invited to appear on a Japanese television program. During the 1970s, Bove and several colleagues established the Little Theatre of the Deaf, an organization aimed at drawing more Deaf people, including children, into theater. The company earned national and international recognition for its focus on communication within the Deaf community and the importance of teaching sign language to Deaf children.

In 1991, Bove and her husband, Ed Waterstreet, co-founded Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles, the first theater company run by Deaf actors. While working with Deaf West, she starred in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. The company performs in sign language and interprets signed dialogue into spoken language to connect Deaf and hearing audiences. In 2005, Bove appeared in several roles in the national tour of the Deaf West production of Big River.

On television, Bove is best known for portraying a fictionalized version of herself, a character named Linda, on the PBS children's series Sesame Street. She first appeared on the program in April 1971, in Episode 0243, as part of a guest appearance with the National Theatre of the Deaf, making her the first Deaf performer on the show. She became a regular cast member in 1975 and continued in the role until 2002, a tenure that made her the longest-working Deaf actor on a single series in television history and Linda the longest-running Deaf character in the show's history. On the program, Linda worked as a librarian, communicated exclusively in American Sign Language, and was eventually portrayed in a romantic relationship with the character Bob. In 2019, Bove reprised the role in the television special Sesame Street's 50th Anniversary Celebration, seventeen years after her last appearance. Beyond her work on Sesame Street, Bove appeared in an episode of Happy Days as Allison, Arthur Fonzarelli's Deaf love interest, and performed on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, a role that made her one of the first Deaf actors to become a regular on a soap opera series.

In 1980, Sesame Street and the National Theatre of the Deaf collaborated on publishing a book titled Sign Language Fun With Linda Bove. Bove has also appeared in American Sign Language video productions, including Sign Me a Story, and had a role in The Land Before Time IV, in which she appeared in a picture-in-picture format signing the dialogue spoken by the film's characters.

In 2004, Bove obtained credentials as a Certified Deaf Interpreter from the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf and has since worked in legal settings and at White House briefings. She married Ed Waterstreet in 1970, having met him while both were working at the National Theatre of the Deaf.

Among the recognition Bove has received, she was awarded a prize in 1974 from AMITA, an Italian-American women's organization, for her television work. In 1991, Gallaudet University awarded her an honorary degree. In 1992, she received the Bernard Bragg Artistic Achievement Award. On July 3, 2012, she was presented with the Media Advocacy Award in recognition of her contributions to advancing the civil, human, and linguistic rights of the American Deaf and hard-of-hearing community through media and social networking.