Blood search
LEIGH WOOSLEY World Scene Writer, 07/13/2003
Linda Zoblotsky (left), adopted by a Tulsa couple, spent almost a decade searching for birth parents before finding them in January. Zoblotsky, 40, recently met with her birth mother, Bett Martinez, and her birth father, Bruce Feld, in California. Courtesy photo
One-woman play documents actress' effort to find her birth parents
Linda Zoblotsky was still looking for her birth parents when she wrote the one-woman play "Linda Zoblotsky Is Luvchild!"
The Tulsa-born actress had been searching for a decade, and in January finally found her biological mother, who lived near San Francisco. Three days after that first conversation, Zoblotsky's birth father called her from Los Angeles.
Zoblotsky, now an actress and singer in New York City, will perform the play in her hometown next month at the Nightingale Theater.
The outspoken 40-year-old began writing "Luvchild" about a year ago, when she was thick in the search for her birth parents. She wanted to -- all at once -- answer the many naive questions people asked about her adoption and her search.
Like why she'd want to find the woman who gave her away. Or did this mean she didn't love her adoptive parents.
"There's just a curiosity about this woman who carried me for nine months," she said in a phone interview from New York. "A curiosity about these people who gave me life. Do they love me? Do they miss me? Do they look like me?"
Zoblotsky had wondered these things since she was a young girl who noticed the way she differed from her adoptive family.
She had freckles. They didn't. She sang and dreamed of being on stage. They didn't.
She'd known since since age 5 she was adopted, but she wanted to know more. The curiosity moved with her when Zoblotsky relocated to New York City a few years after her 1981 graduation from Memorial High School.
She set out to answer the questions almost a decade ago. She sent all the information she had about her birth to the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association, or ALMA, a nonprofit organization that helps reunite adopted children with their biological parents.
Eight years later, ALMA sent Zoblotsky a letter with the name of a woman who matched her birth information. This was a Jewish woman who had a girl on Jan. 31, 1963, in El Paso, Texas.
That led Zoblotsky to the phone number of Bett Martinez, a number she dialed with almost equal amounts of anticipation and trepidation. It was her birth mother, and days after they spoke, Zoblotsky's birth father called. She's spent the last several months getting to know them.
They conceived Zoblotsky while attending the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago. That explained Zoblotsky's urge to perform, among many other mysteries that have long baffled her.
She finally had the answer to questions about her ethnicity. "Jewish, Ukranian, German, Scottish and Irish -- it was so exciting to answer that question," she said.
Knowing her birth family gave her answers to life-long questions. Now she hopes to quell the public's curiosity about adoption and the people involved.
"I want to put a human face on adoptees and their birth par ents," she said. "Birth mothers and birth fathers are real people out there who really wonder about their birth children.
"Even though they had to give us up under difficult circumstances, they still love us."
"LINDA ZOBLOTSKY IS LUVCHILD!"
When: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 11
Where: NIGHTINGALE THEATER, 1416 E. Fourth St.
Tickets: $10
For more information Please call 583-8487 [As of February 2007, 633-8666]