A Transcript of our Conversation with Clayton LeBouef, Part 2
With Hosts Elizabeth Bruce and Michael Oliver
If you would like to read a transcript of Part 2 of our conversation with Clayton LeBouef, you’re in luck. Below is the opening with a link to the whole conversation here.
Clayton is an American actor, playwright, activist, and producer, best known for his recurring television role as Colonel George Barnfather in Homicide: Life on the Street, and in the 2000 epilogue, Homicide: The Movie.
In 2000, he also appeared in the award-winning miniseries, The Corner, and in 2002, he played Wendell Orlando Blocker in the renowned long-form television drama, The Wire. Clayton also appeared in the HBO movie Something the Lord Made with Mos Def and in many episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent and Law and Order: SVU.
His portrayal of barbershop owner Tom Taylor in the short film The Doll won him Best Actor honors at the San Diego Black Film Festival. As a stage actor, he has performed widely in the Washington, Baltimore region and nationally, including as a repertory company member in Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope, directed by Molly Smith, and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean at Arena Stage; in A Soldier’s Play at Source Theater; at Anacostia Playhouse in his play, RS/24; and as the title character in Derek Walcott's Ti-Jean and His Brothers at Sanctuary Theater. A playwright, DJ, activist, and spoken word poet, Clayton's play, Shero: The Livication of Henrietta Venton Davis, was commissioned by Baltimore's Center Stage. His play, Tied Apart, addresses apartheid in South Africa.
And his recent play, RS/24, features a record store owner selling vinyl of the musical greats. Born in Yonkers, New York, Clayton attended Carnegie Mellon University before moving to Washington, D. C. in 1974. He is married to Zuella Evans, and they have two adult daughters.
For more information about Clayton, click here.
Glossary
· Life on the Killing Streets [Homicide: a Year on the Killing Streets]
· Mr. McGinty and the Takoma Theater
· RS/24
This is part two of our Theatre in Community interview with Clayton LeBouef. In this part, Clayton discusses the idea of community in both TV work and in theatre, focusing particularly on his experiences performing the role of Colonel Barnfather in Homicide: Life on the Street. Clayton also discusses his love of music and the production of his new play RS/24 at Anacostia Stage prior to the pandemic.
A quick note to listeners: On each episode of our Theatre in Community series, we include a glossary of theatre terms and names referenced in the interview.
Michael: I like that concept of, what, deep issues?
Clayton: Yeah. That's what people call deep issues. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. And frequently, I think that audiences don't necessarily like going into deep issues—they're resistant, let's put it that way. They resist going into deep issues, but that makes a theater piece that invites them, encourages them, or nudges them to go into that space—
Clayton: Yes.
Michael: —all the more challenging and rewarding. Can you maybe talk about some of your experiences with plays about connecting with that deep issue?
Clayton: Connecting. That's what I lean toward.
Michael: Yes.
Clayton: Some people have even said, oh man, some people that say you're, my daughter told me one time—Jane—she said, she looked at my DVD collection, she said, “You have to lighten this collection.” You know what I mean? “It’s heavy.” And I just cracked up, actually went out. It was a Friday, I actually went [00:52:00] out after she said it and picked up a nice little, a little piece to watch.
But it's called life. Some people call it deep issues. It's called life. And one thing you have to be careful, I have to be careful of is, there's two masks, right? There's tragedy and comedy. See, and if I don't balance it out, then it's too heavy for me, too. See, so that's the beauty of theater again. It's like in Africa, they had come up the greatest mask work that you'll find in the world is in Africa. In my opinion. And that's proven, right? Mask work. And they have joy and pain, sorrow and happiness. And balance, if you balance them out. I work to balance. I can be very funny. I've been in some comedies, and I have to do, you do more of that.
But to answer your question, I have to give a shout out to subscriber bases. They are not afraid of the deep issues. People who have subscriptions to shows, I love those folks, because see, they'll come out in the snow, you know what I mean? They'll come out, they’re into the deep [00:53:00] plays. If you have any subscribers or angels, they call them angels. Their names are on the program. You got to check those people out because—
Michael: Molly said the she subscriptions were down, that people are doing—
Clayton: Oh, is that right?
Michael: Maybe that was Joy.
Clayton: You know what? That, again, we can attribute that maybe to the stream—there's so much to watch now.
Elizabeth: Right, right.
Clayton: But back before this, when you look at a subscriber base, when I worked over at Arena Stage, they would come out, and these were elders, too, driving—young people, “It's snowing out there!”— some of these elders, right? And I have a deep love for audiences in theater.
Michael: Sure.
Clayton: Because they could stay home, they stay home and watch television, so there's a deep respect for subscribers and people who pay. And sometimes they're subscribers and they don't know what they're getting. These are new plays. Or older plays. I love they, they're, to me, they are what I would call experimenters, like when you buy records, and you've never heard it. [00:54:00] I buy records, and I'll look at the album cover, and I'll buy it sometimes based on the album cover. And it becomes an adventure. Whoever heard it over—
Elizabeth: Yeah, a leap of faith.
Clayton: Yeah, leap of faith. And subscribers are like that. Now, the other community, as you say, they may be, they work hard, so they want to be entertained. And that's the other side of it. They don't want the deep issues. It's, “I work hard, that's deep enough.” You know what I'm saying? Give me a musical, that's deep right there. I'm not trying to do no apartheid and Ti-Jean and His Brothers, which was entertaining though. So, the great art, the challenge of theater is to make it entertaining, and to touch on deeper—and those two things are difficult for writers, maybe, to do, but I love it when it's balanced like that. If I'm answering your question.
Elizabeth: Speaking of people staying home and watching television, you, we knew you as a stage actor and I think we're all great lovers of that [00:55:00] theatrical process, but most of our listeners will probably know you as a television and film actor from your work on Homicide where you had the regular role of Captain George Barnfather and, as well as your regular role of Orlando Blocker in The Wire. Can you rewind the videotape a little bit, if you will, and talk to us about your transition or at least that addition in your actor life from stage work to TV and film. And talk a little bit about the differences between acting on stage and acting for the camera.
Clayton: Yeah, there's magical things that happen to you, that you think you start reflecting on. I was in a bookstore, a B. Dalton bookstore—and this is a true story—and I was looking, and sometimes books, their covers will call you. You just look and it finds you in that way. You know what I'm saying? I know book lovers can understand what I'm saying, right? You're not looking for the book, but you’ll glance and whatever the book—and I looked up on the [00:56:00] shelf and this black book with red letters called Homicide and it was a thick book, and I grabbed it. Now, this is before meeting. This is my introduction. I picked the book up, and, how did they say it? Life on the Killing Streets. That was the subtitle. And, but when I read the flap, basically it's about Black young men in Baltimore and the problems of homicide. This terrible word that we have, which means there are men and women who have to find out who killed somebody. It's like, it's a homicide. There are men and there are people, medical people, who have to look into your body and take the bullet out. Heavy, again, right? Deep stuff.
I read the book by David Simon, and it was fascinating. Fascinating because he was able to hang out with these people who do this work. Also, it's [00:57:00] another deep topic about the community that I come from. This is something ever since I was a child. You hear about gun violence within your own community. Some people call it “Black-on-Black crime.” I say I can't go with that because I don't know Black people who manufacture bullets and guns. If you show me a Black gun, bullet manufacturer, then maybe I'll go with Black-on-Black crime. Okay? See?
Elizabeth: Follow the money, yeah.
Clayton: Because they say it's a gun problem, but it's a bullet problem. You got the gun, but then there's ammunition that finds its way into our communities. So that's another topic, but that's how I do. That's how I roll.
I pick that book up, it found me, I read it, and then next thing you know, I'm working at Center Stage with Irene Lewis, doing theater at Center Stage, right?
Elizabeth: In Baltimore.
Clayton: In Baltimore. August Wilson, Shakespeare, I did Romeo and Juliet, I did, what's the other one, Pericles. You see what I [00:58:00] mean? I've done a couple of shows, a number of shows at Center Stage. And they commissioned the play that you mentioned in your intro. And I found out that they were auditioning for a television show that was coming into the town. And it was the book that I read. And I'm like, wow, this is interesting.
Elizabeth: Serendipity.
Clayton: David Simon, right? So I go and I audition for, not the character that I end up playing. Then when I go in and audition, they have all of these people sitting at a desk. They have seven or eight. It's not like a theater with you two, two people. It's seven or eight people watching your audition. And one guy gets up and comes around the desk. And he walks right up to me. I don't know who he is. And he says, “Listen, if we give you this role of Barnfather, would you cut your hair?” Because I have a lot of hair and so I, he said, if I give you, “If we give you this role, would you cut your hair?” And I said to him, “I'm an actor.” And that's [00:59:00] all I said. Yeah. He looked at me. He smiled.
I later found out that I answered in character. My character was Barnfather, the politico. I didn't say yes. I didn't say no. I said, “I'm an actor.” So that's the smart mouth. But it can help you sometimes, right? Cause he smiled at me, and I didn't know, he gave me like a little smile, okay. And walked away, I found out it was Tom Fontana, this really strong, talented producer of television. David Simon wasn't even in the room. I don't, I didn't know him.
But anyway, they cast me. And I went on to have one of the greatest experience, my introduction to a television series. I had done TV before that one show called The Eagle and the Lion, which is fascinating. That's the first TV thing I did in Baltimore and that comes from the community. Arena Players. [01:00:00]
So these are transitions, see. And that's why the term, when I found out “nonlinear,” I love it because that's how I speak. That's how I talk. But I like to try to make it relate to other things. I find it's a way of expression, whether people enjoy hearing you go into other aspects of what you want to, and what you decide to speak about. You see what I mean? If it doesn't answer a specific question, maybe the story will reveal something to you where the answer comes from you, rather than the person that is speaking. Because a story is being shared and you can find the answer within yourself and have an insight rather than the answer being you being told. So that's what nonlinear speaking does, that's what storytelling does for me. And that's what I enjoy doing, whether I'm speaking to colleges, universities, or whether I'm shutting up and playing a character that doesn't have much to say, with pantomime or [01:01:00] whatever.
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