Aldona Page, actress, teacher, and Lithuanian cultural advocate, has died at 89

Aldona Page, 89, formerly of Philadelphia, an actress, language and drama teacher, and dynamic Lithuanian cultural advocate, died Saturday, July 2, of heart disease at her home in New York.

Ms. Page was a lifelong actress, appearing in summer productions as a child in Lithuania, in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame while a student at Wayne State University in Detroit, and later in dozens of shows as a professional in Philadelphia, Cheltenham, Media, Wyncote, and Villanova.

She played the lead in the 1976 world premiere of Lanie Robertson’s The Insanity of Mary Girard at the Painted Bride Art Center, and Mary Martin Niepold, The Inquirer’s entertainment writer, wrote that the role was “powerfully realized by Aldona Page.”

“She lived an interesting contrast,” said her son, Andrew. “She embraced experimental theater but was proud of her heritage and traditions.”

Ms. Page appeared at the Society Hill Playhouse in 1983′s The Visit, at the Walnut Street Theatre in 1984′s Marathon, and at the Walnut Street Theatre’s Studio 3 in 1984′s Return, Return and 1989′s With Albert Einstein. She had a supporting role in the 2004 film Four Funny Families, was an active member of the Philadelphia-based Theater of the Edge troupe, and toured theaters in Poland and East Germany in the 1980s.

She studied ballet, modern dance, and ethnic dance; sang in a Lithuanian choir; attended many workshops on acting, and hosted a Lithuanian radio show. In 1991, she helped arrange for the actors of the touring State Theater of Lithuania to perform at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center, and she was researching opportunities for her own senior roles until shortly before her death.

She was driven, she told her family, by “the power of performing on stage.” Her son said: “She often talked about her need to work in the arts, and she was open to the many forms that it might take.”

Born in Stropeliai, Lithuania, Ms. Page came to the United States in 1950 and immediately sought out those who had arrived before her. She volunteered for Lithuanian youth programs in Detroit and Philadelphia, assumed active roles with Lithuanian cultural organizations, and later returned to Lithuania to reconnect with family and the culture.

She served as director of the Philadelphia chapter of the Folk Art Institute at the Lithuanian Cultural Center and as chair of the U.S. Lithuanian Community Cultural Council. She taught Lithuanian language classes privately and at Penn, and drama lessons to gifted high school students in Philadelphia.

Aldona Rastenyte was born Dec. 16, 1932, and moved with her family to Kaunas, Lithuania, when she was a child and then to Germany during World War II, where she finished high school in a displaced persons camp. She came to the United States through a refugee program, settled in Detroit, and worked as a bookkeeper and bank teller while earning her bachelor’s degree in German language and literature at Wayne State.

She met fellow actor Robert Page in college, and they married in 1961, and had daughters Lina and Indre, and sons Andrew and John.

Ms. Page and her husband worked for a time translating and publishing literary works by Lithuanian writers for the Hudson Review and other publications. They moved to West Mount Airy in Philadelphia in 1966 when her husband got a job teaching English at Temple University.

After a divorce in the 1980s, Ms. Page worked as an administrator at Penn and delighted in interacting with the theater and dance companies at the Annenberg Center. She retired in 2000.

An engaging storyteller, Ms. Page delighted in conversation and translated many Lithuanian poems. Her homemade pancakes, served with butter and honey, were family favorites for years, and her children, grandchildren, and friends routinely altered their plans to attend her lively backyard gatherings in Mount Airy.

She spent summers with family in the 1970s at a remote farmhouse in Maine, lived with or near her children in recent years, and, after moving to New York in 2021, enjoyed visits to flower shops, buying Lithuanian bread at a nearby bakery, and walks in the park, where she was known to occasionally hug a tree or two.

She was a longtime member at St. Andrew Lithuanian Church.

“Her grace, generosity of spirit, and positivity in the face of adversity will live on in the memories and hearts of her children, grandchildren, and all who knew her,” her family said in a tribute.

In addition to her children and former husband, Ms. Page is survived by eight grandchildren, a sister, and other relatives.

Services were held Saturday, July 9.

Donations in her name may be made to the Lithuanian Music Hall support fund at the The Lithuanian Cultural Center of Philadelphia, 2715 E. Allegheny Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19134.