A Long Way from Sesame Street : Known as Linda the Librarian, Linda Bove is making a different impression with the tragic classic of the murderous mom.

Before Susan Smith, there was Medea. A woman scorned, who in a moment’s madness, deliberately killed her two young sons.

“I keep asking myself, ‘ How can she do this ?’ ” says actress Linda Bove, who plays the title role in Deaf West Theatre’s encore production of Euripides’ classic tragedy, opening Friday. “Susan Smith wasn’t able to give her own husband an answer. And Medea--I don’t think of her as a bad woman, not at all. Women of that time were very repressed. Husbands were able to do whatever they pleased, and the women had no options. Medea was spurned by her husband for another woman. For her, it was the end of the world.”

Bove believes--as Smith contended in her own case--that premeditation was not an issue.

“Medea loves her husband, Jason, so much,” says the actress, who’s been deaf since birth. (On this day, Deaf West marketing director Beverly Nero is serving as her interpreter.) “Her desire for him is so intense. She knows she’s going to be banished that day. She comes to the realization that life is going to be terrible for her anyway, but she’s going to survive [her sons’ deaths]. She knows Jason cannot survive that. Still, she’s torn between doing it and not doing it. Torn. She loves her children. But the fact is that she’s willing to do that for revenge on Jason, to live the rest of her life with that.”

It’s a story that has bewitched audiences for centuries--and now, with Kenneth Albers’ staging (a reprise of last spring’s sold-out production), is colored with the added element of sign language. “The sign language really enhances the play,” stresses Bove. The cast comprises hearing and deaf performers (hearing actor Paul Raci, who plays Jason, speaks and signs his part), while a multicultural Greek chorus acts as the lyrical throughline, voicing the words of each of the characters.

“I want to emphasize that this is not exclusively for the deaf community,” says Ed Waterstreet, Deaf West’s artistic director of four years and Bove’s husband of 25 years. “It really is for mixed audiences. About 75% of our audience is hearing. Hearing people are used to [going to plays], yet they’re excited, too, because this is a little different. But the deaf community is not used to attending theater on a regular basis. When I was growing up, there was no theater, and I was starved for it,” he says through an interpreter.

Bove, who grew up in New Jersey, says she, too, was “greatly affected” by the lack of theater available to her, both as a performer and playgoer. Though she occasionally acted in school plays, it wasn’t until her junior year in college--a staging of “The Threepenny Opera”--that the acting bug bit. “I got into theater for the art itself,” she explains. “Theater becomes an artistic medium to express oneself, and sign-language theater is the way I can express my voice.”

Waterstreet and Bove met as freshmen 30 years ago at Gallaudet University in Washington, but it was not immediately a love match. In fact, they didn’t connect romantically until their senior year. And there were a few minor obstacles: He was already married and she was engaged. “It’s true,” Bove recalls with a wicked smile. “I broke my engagement 13 days before I was supposed to get married.” Straight out of college, the two joined the National Theatre of the Deaf, and began a nonstop whirl of regional touring.

Then in 1969, Bove got very lucky. NTD Artistic Director David Hays had heard that a new children’s show called “Sesame Street” was being developed at PBS. He contacted the show’s executive director and pitched the idea of having sign language used on the show. In short time, Bove became the “It” girl, and spent the next eight years appearing semi-regularly as a guest performer. In 1977, when she decided to leave the NTD, she asked the creators of “Sesame Street” to develop a character for her. They did.

Eighteen years later, Linda the Librarian is still there.

“Doing Medea is very hard for me, because I’m known as this Linda character: nice and good--just the extreme; I forgot how to act like that after so many years working on television,” says Bove, who normally tapes “Sesame Street” in New York from August to December. (The show’s producers granted her a month off to do this play.)

Yet she was pleasantly surprised to find Medea’s rage quite accessible: “You feel it burning, welling up, and it just takes over. Your guts beat out your intellect, and it’s like, ‘ Do it .’ ” She grins, dizzied by her love of the role, and the limited time--just three weekends--her schedule will allow her to do it.

“Medea” also marks a rare local outing for Bove, who Los Angeles audiences saw onstage when “Children of a Lesser God” played at the Doolittle in 1981. Though not in the original Taper cast, Bove understudied Phyllis Frelich on Broadway, later taking over the lead there and on the national tour, which she played for two years.

After living in Connecticut for several years, Bove and Waterstreet settled in Studio City 10 years ago. “The job opportunities in theater are so scarce,” she says with a shrug. So the actress keeps busy doing personal appearances at malls and zoos, performing a 30-minute children’s show of poetry, stories and songs. And her children’s theater project, “Sign Me a Story” (which she performs with Waterstreet and another actor), is also regularly on tour: upcoming are stops in Connecticut in October and Boston in January.

Although she worked on the soap opera “Search for Tomorrow” in the mid-’70s, Bove has few illusions about her commercial marketability. “I no longer seek work in the Hollywood industry,” she says coolly, “because there are no opportunities for me. Instead of wasting my time begging, I’d rather focus on developing my own show or full productions with Ed--or talking to children or doing ‘Sesame Street.’ I’m very comfortable pitching ideas [to the producers], and they’re open to them. Even hearing kids on the street approach me, signing. So it’s been really terrific exposure.”

The exposure comes with a price. For Bove, it’s meant re-examining her image as a successful role model for deaf actresses.

“In the ‘70s, when I was doing three jobs at a time, I was so happy, so grateful,” she says. “And as with any young actor representing their community, I felt I had to carry a torch, leave a good impression for future generations of deaf actors. But I had no role models, so it was total guesswork--talking with Ed, family and friends, other actors. It was a little overwhelming. Then I realized, ‘No, I’m not responsible for you; I’m responsible for myself. I want to do my own good work, what’s important to me.’ After that, I had a wonderful time.”

She’s also come to terms with her limited access to mainstream theater.

“The deaf are starved for good entertainment,” insists Bove, who directed “The Gin Game” and produced “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for Deaf West. “And there are so few deaf theaters in the country outside of [ours]. So I do go to mainstream theaters once in awhile. But I am missing out; most of them aren’t accessible. So I watch a lot of videos, close-captioned. It’s not the same thing as seeing live theater, and letting the magic take over.”

“MEDEA,”Deaf West Theatre, 660 N. Heliotrope Drive, Los Angeles. Dates: Opens Friday. Plays Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Oct. 1. Price: $15; $12 for students and senior citizens. Phone: (213) 660-4673; (213) 660-8826 TDD.