Alex Keiper, of Hicks and Dickinson streets, is used to being cast as the girl next door. When director Matthew Decker called her about a role in “Kimberly Akimbo,” she was surprised by the description.
“The role is a bit of an extreme for me,” Keiper, 26, said. “She’s a homeless, lesbian, ex-con, trying to get Kimberly to take part in a scam with her.”
Keiper plays Debra in Theatre Horizon’s current production of “Kimberly Akimbo,” a Pulitzer-prize winning work about a 16-year-old who suffers from a disease akin to progeria, which is a disorder that ages the body at an extreme rate. In the play, Kimberly’s life expectancy was to the age of 16, and the play begins just after her 16th birthday.
“It’s a really funny, dark comedy, which are some of my favorite kinds. There are really these kind of uncomfortable moments that you just see the people on stage making these horrific comments and you find yourself laughing and asking yourself if you should be laughing at that,” she said.
Playing Debra, which requires Keiper to get cornrows put in her hair every Thursday during the show’s run, is a departure from her usual genre of musical theater.
“I think there was not hesitation but interest in how I would handle a scene rather than a song,” Keiper said of the audition process. “It’s been excellent and really hard. It just feels totally different. The energy of a straight play has to be kept up in a different way than a musical since it’s not the same kind of heightened world. There is more a base kind of level that doesn’t change the fact that the energy has to keep going.
“It’s been interesting to explore how to find this energy.”
Opening Sept. 8, shows run mainly Thursdays to Sundays until Oct. 2. Initial review has been positive, the actress said, although many audience members have very different experiences.
“I’ve heard experiences varying from laughing the entire show or just crying all the time,” she said. “Either way it’s a wild ride.”
Keiper left Fairfax, Va. after high school to pursue a degree at University of the Arts, but much of her training began before she set foot in Philadelphia.
“My dad was an actor and is now an actor. He and I were doing monologues in the living room when I was about 5,” Keiper said of her father, Robert. “He always says he would never push it. He’d just be telling stories about his and I’d get up and say I wanted to do it with him.”
The first time Keiper stepped onto the stage in seventh grade she was in good company.
“We did a community theater show together — me and my dad,” Keiper said. “I had three lines and my dad was the star of the show. I ran on and ran off with him.”
Upon graduating high school, Keiper, who had not had any vocal training despite singing often, decided formal undergraduate schooling was the best decision.
“When I got to University of the Arts, I felt so far behind everyone else. I had a range of maybe four notes and didn’t know what I wanted to do to make that better,” she said. “But with the personal attention you get there, I was able to expand my range quite a bit, and now my range is enormous.
“It was really a struggle to get there to here, and I’m so proud I was able to and continue to do it.”
Following graduation, Keiper spent a short stint in New York, but found work in Philadelphia time and time again, and eventually decided she was most comfortable in the local scene. Since then, she has won a Barrymore Award for her work with 11th Hour Theatre Co.
“I love [South Philly]. I really can’t imagine living anywhere else,” Keiper said. “We actually live in not the absolute safest area of South Philly, but the community feels so safe. You know everybody on your block and everyone always says ‘hi’ and watches out.”
With upcoming performances scheduled as the lead role in Walnut Theatre Co.’s December production of “Proof” — something Keiper listed as a dream come true — and another work at the Arden with “Tulipomania,” Keiper continues to lay the groundwork for the career she always envisioned.
“I think there are so many roles for older women performers that I admire,” Keiper said. “There are amazing older women who are icons in my idea of what theater can be and how far you can reach as an actress.
“My biggest hope would be to continue to get challenged to do roles I’m not sure I can do. And as I’m getting older and older, approaching these life-changing roles, I’d feel more ready to take them on.” SPR
