Featured Pro: Laurie Slade’s Life & Times, on Stage & Off

BY RICHARD CAMP

That was the dream of the young girl born Laurie Walters in San Francisco,

California, who moved with her family to Walnut Creek when she was two years old. That set her on a path toward half of her dream, because she loved to romp in a gully and open field behind her house. “That’s where I fell in love with

So did acting. When a child, she played Mary in an Easter pageant and was thrilled when adults praised her performance. “I thought that to be an actor you had to be the child of an actor

… I didn’t realize regular people could do it. Suddenly, the world opened and I insisted on drama lessons.” Which her parents provided after they moved back to San Francisco when Laurie was seven.

Her father, Lawrence Frederick Walters, had been born and raised in San Francisco into a family of eight children, and became a vice president in a construction company that built many iconic buildings in the city, including the Transamerica Pyramid. Her mom, Elsie Louise Ulbrich, was born into a poor family of nine children in South Dakota and left by hitchhiking to San Francisco, where she met Lawrence. Elsie became a full-time mom to Laurie and two sisters, Sharon Walters and Linda Cetrulo, both with whom Laurie is still very close.

After high school, Laurie attended Humboldt State College to study conservation, but the acting bug kept drawing her to the school’s brand-new theater building.

This inspired Laurie to drop out and move to Berkeley where she lived on her own for the first time. There, she started working in every aspect of the theatre with a group that eventually became the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. “I can say I was a founding member of BRT,” Laurie proudly says. After BRT she worked at the Marin Shakespeare Company where she played Rosalind in “As You Like It” and Hero in “Much Ado About Nothing,” sometimes hitchhiking across San Francisco Bay because she didn’t have a car. (A hitchhiking gene inherited from her mom?) More Shakespeare roles earned her an Equity card, and perhaps instilled a lifelong adoration of the works of Shakespeare.

Later, a San Francisco audition led to a film job in Los Angeles, where, with SAG card now in hand, she studied at the Strasberg Institute and appeared in guest starring roles on television series before her big break came when she was cast as Joanie in the hugely popular TV dram/com, “Eight is Enough.” (Her father, from a family of eight, got a big laugh out of this.) Laurie was also very proud of her work at the Mark Taper Forum and at the South Coast Rep, where she won a Dramalogue Award for Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” to add to her L.A. Critics Circle Award and Dramalogue Award for “Playboy of the Western World.”

By early 1990s, she says, “It became clear I wasn’t making the transition from ingénue to leading lady.” So, she transitioned to her other passion and worked for the environmental group, TreePeople. “I’m proud to say I’ve planted many trees in the urban forest of Los Angeles!”

But, the theatre never lost its seductive allure. Her life changed dramatically when she met her “soulmate” John Slade while performing together in Shakespeare’s “King John.” “It was fascination at first sight,” remembers Laurie, of John’s titular performance. They married in 1999 and in 2000 performed in “Julius Caesar” at the Ojai Shakespeare Festival, at the request of its then artistic director, Paul Backer.

His passion lay in directing and writing, and he’d won a trunk full of prestigious awards in those fields. That passion blossomed in Ojai, where he honed his writing and performing skills while nurturing students at Nordhoff. He also encouraged Laurie to audition for “Sylvia,” with

Joe Spano, at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura. She got the part, followed by roles in “Children of a Lesser God,” “Fools,” and “A Christmas Carol.”

Always the nature girl, Laurie helped found the Ojai Church of the Wild, a group that meets in various parts of the valley, to commune with nature. And, she worked for many years for the Green Coalition where her proudest accomplishment was establishing an environmental lending library, as well as serving on its Board. With her stint on the Board of the Ojai Shakespeare Festival, she has served on two boards that represent her twin passions, Shakespeare and the environment. She also leads an ongoing Shakespeare Salon that meets regularly to deeply study the Bard’s plays.

Meanwhile, John began to have success by acting and singing in a one-man show he’d written based on the writings of Walt Whitman, “an inspiring visit with America’s first evolutionary soul singer,” as John called it. He performed this piece in cities across the country, and was planning to enter it into the all-important university circuit. Sadly, that never happened. On July 6, 2017, as he was returning from a rehearsal for the Kingsman Shakespeare Company at Cal Lutheran, his car was struck by a speeding driver. He died the following morning. “I am still half myself,” says Laurie. “I lost my beautiful, beloved soulmate.” The care and support from her two sisters and from the Ojai community helped her survive this heartbreaking loss. The John C. Slade Memorial Theatre Scholarship was created in his name, managed by the Nordhoff Parents Association. Anyone wishing to donate can send a check to the NPA, marking it for John’s scholarship. “John helped students believe in themselves, and believe that if they wanted to be theatre artists they could, and should pursue that dream.”

It has taken Laurie a good deal of time to overcome her loss, but, she’s slowly beginning to re-emerge. She created another library, the Slade Collection, housed at the Ojai Art Center, consisting of hundreds of plays, theatre and film books that belonged to John and her. She is also starring in the wickedly funny “Vonya and Sonya and Masha and Spike,” slated to begin on January 21st at the Art Center Theater, a play that she and John once did at the old Theatre 150 in a group they’d started called “Potlucks and Play Readings.” And, on April 1st she will open in OPAT’s production of the hilarious and heartwarming play, “Harvey,” co-starring Dr. Jim Halverson, where she tries to match wits with an invisible rabbit.

Environmentalist, actress and makeshift librarian, Laurie Walters Slade treasures her time in Ojai and loves its peace and its pace. “I’ve found a sense of place,” she feels. Still working to save the earth, and now very much a respected actress. The twin fulfillments of a young girl’s dream.

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