A Transcript of our Conversation with Clayton LeBouef
With Hosts Elizabeth Bruce and Michael Oliver
If you would like to read a transcript 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
· Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope
· August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean
· Southern Africa Support Project
Our Theatre in Community interview is with local stage and TV actor Clayton LeBouef. In part 1 of our interview, Clayton speaks about how he discovered his passion for storytelling, his move to DC from his native Yonkers, New York, and his early roles at Source and Sanctuary Theatres. Eventually, he is recruited by Zelda Fichandler of Arena Stage to join the company’s acting ensemble. Part 2 of our interview focuses on Clayton’s return to the local theatre scene after his roles on Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire.
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.
Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Theater in Community podcast of Creativists in Dialogue, a podcast embracing the creative life. I'm Elizabeth Bruce.
Michael: And I'm Michael Oliver.
Elizabeth: And our guest today is longtime friend and theater colleague Clayton LeBouef. 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 & Order: Criminal Intent, and Law and Order: SVU. His portrayal of barbershop [00:01:00] 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 in Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope, directed by Molly Smith, and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean at Arena Stage, in Soldier Story at Source Theater, at Anacostia Playhouse in his play RS/24, and as the title character in Derek Walcott's Ti-Jean & His Brothers at Sanctuary Theater.
A playwright, DJ, activist, and spoken word poet, Clayton's play Shero: The Livication of Henrietta Vinton 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, [00:02:00] Clayton attended Carnegie Mellon University before moving to Washington, DC in 1974. He is married to Zuella Evans, and they have two adult daughters. Welcome, Clayton.
Clayton: Thank you, Elizabeth and Michael. It's a pleasure.
Michael: We like to start our interviews off, Clayton, with some early memories of creativity. Now you're from Yonkers, New York, and most of our listeners will know that's a community just north of Manhattan.
Clayton: Yes.
Michael: Okay, so what were some of your earliest memories of creativity, either as a participant or as a witness?
Clayton: I grew up in the Schlobohm Housing Projects, which is a famous—or infamous—housing project now. And inside that housing project, there was like eight buildings. And there were seven stories of each building. So it's a pretty nice sized project housing. And we created street games. Or they were created by others. [00:03:00] And some of these games were just fascinating, Cross The Plank and Join The Crew.
Michael: That was the name of one of them?
Clayton: The names of them. Right. Hot Peas and Butter.
Elizabeth: Hot Peas and Butter, alright!
Clayton: Yes. Buck, How Many Fingers Are Up? Ringolevio.
Elizabeth: Ringolevio.
Clayton: Which was the ultimate game.
Michael: Oh my goodness.
Clayton: Yeah, it took almost maybe about seven hours to play.
Elizabeth: Wow! So this is—
Clayton: Of course, the other one, Stickball, that we would play on a curbside. Running Bases. The creativity was amazing in terms of street games. That's how I'll answer your question first.
Elizabeth: Sure.
Michael: Wow.
Elizabeth: Wow. Did you become interested in theater as a teenager? And if so, what were your first experiences as an actor or as a playwright or something else?
Michael: It sounds like some of these games might have been very theatrical.
Clayton: Exactly right. And then theater is creativity, right? People coming together and collaborating. So the street [00:04:00] games serve for improvisation. You see what I mean? The street games served in many other ways. But also, on the other level, crayons, chalk—when you're gifted with crayons and chalk, and you see some of the way people create on streets, street art, the graffiti. I didn't do, I wasn't a tagger, per se, that came later. But we would take chalk and express ourselves on the street.
Elizabeth: So these games that you all made up, these were created with your—
Clayton: They were created probably before I was born.
Elizabeth: Okay.
Clayton: But we had our own little style to it.
Elizabeth: But they were specific to that housing project? Or were they from some other place?
Clayton: No, some of them, if you could get books on them.
Elizabeth: Okay.
Clayton: So some were specific or the way they were played. We had marbles, that's not specific.
Elizabeth: Sure.
Clayton: But the way we—bottle caps, now that was an interesting one. They're called Skelly in other neighborhoods, we just call it bottle caps, where you would put a diagram on the curbside or the sidewalk and [00:05:00] flick your bottle caps with your hand. We put wax inside the bottle caps to make them heavier. And you would click it and go. And you can knock people off their, off their courts.
Elizabeth: Yeah, like shuffleboard or something.
Clayton: So it's just amazing to get up in the morning. And then you had basketball and the rest of it.
Elizabeth: So, id these games have characters? Did you, were they imaginary theatrical games? No. Or were they competitions or contests?
Clayton: They were actually sometimes violent as well. We had something called Bumps and Bruises. Okay? Now that wasn't a game per se, but that was part of another game that if you were caught in your apartment. See, it was a game that we were playing where you had to look for people, hide-and-seek or Hot Peas and Butter, you had to look for people. They would hide, because look, seven buildings—eight buildings with seven floors. When Halloween came around, you should have seen my bag. For the candy? That's why my stuff is messed [00:06:00] up now. But, can you imagine? So you're hiding within laundromats. You see them all throughout these buildings. But if you were caught going into your apartment that's off limits ‘cause nobody can find it. But we’d do it all the time. Go in there and eat, sit down, watch one inning of—while everybody's watching for you, watching one inning of a baseball game. But if you were found out by the person—
Elizabeth: Oh, then you get bumped and bruised.
Clayton: There you go. You'd go back. And plus the characters that you asked, they're all in the neighborhood.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Sure.
Clayton: The characters are the people.
Elizabeth: So these games went on into your adolescence or was this when you were younger?
Clayton: All the way up to maybe, let me see, when I left to go to college—I was early, like, I graduated high school at 17. So up to that point.
Elizabeth: Speaking of high school, did you do theater in high school? Was there any kind of drama?
Clayton: Yes, I did. That's where it started. On, on, on the real side.
Elizabeth: So tell us about that.
Clayton: Yeah, there was a gentleman there that I talk about. His name was John Federico. A brilliant man. And he was head of the theater, he would put up the [00:07:00] plays, but he would do the set, he'd score the music. Michael, I have to say, you remind me of him to that degree. A full theater cat. You see what I mean? He wrote—I don't know if you write music or compose.
Michael: No.
Elizabeth: Don’t ask him to sing. Whatever you do, do not ask Michael to sing.
Clayton: John Federico didn't sing either, I don't know, but he came up to me one time. And he just said, “You should try out for one of the plays I'm doing. I wrote it.” I was known in the school. I was the president of the school, I got voted. Didn't do anything, but, so he asked me to be in an original play called The Sophisticated Touch.
Elizabeth: Interesting.
Clayton: It was a musical and that was my initial—however, though, the second one is what did it. He said, “I'm going to cast you in Amiri Baraka, which was Leroi Jones.
Elizabeth: This was Leroi Jones.
Clayton: The Dutchman.
Elizabeth: The Dutchman? You were in The—were you the Dutchman?
Clayton: In high school.
Michael: In high school!
Elizabeth: Boy, that's an intense play.
Clayton: Let me tell you something, it was so intense, the board of directors didn't want us to do it.
Elizabeth: I bet they didn’t, yeah.
Clayton: And this guy, Mr. Federico, he [00:08:00] said, “I'm gonna try my best because Clayton and I want”—and we had a young lady, because you have to have a strong woman to play that role.
Elizabeth: Oh, yeah. It’s a two-person—
Clayton: Charlene was her name. She was excellent. But they told him, “If you do an after show discussion, you could mount the play.” After we did that play, the after-show discussions were amazing. And that's when I realized what theater can do. ‘Cause the people—
Michael: So, is it, the after show discussion, was that like with parents?
Clayton: Yes. Parents.
Michael: Wow. That must have been intense.
Clayton: What he did, he was brilliant, what he did, schools have these large auditoriums, what he did was close the curtains on stage and put benches. In baseball, what do you call the benches in there?
Elizabeth: Yeah, so intimate theater place.
Clayton: Intimate. And put, and made a set of a subway stop. So we had a number of shows to fulfill the large—or so rather than having a big large high school auditorium, this play was so intimate He put it on stage—
Elizabeth: So this is you can explain briefly what the plot of The Dutchman is, it’s a Black man and a White woman on a—[00:09:00]
Clayton: Oh, yes, Black man on a subway train—
Elizabeth: —and they get into a conflict. It’s a complex—
Clayton: Yes. She seduces him and once he gets interested, she turns on and then they have this very intense—so you can imagine what the after-show, so Charlene and I, we sat there and answered the questions and they were amazing. I was sitting there acting like a host now, not just the actor, but seeing how people, how real it felt to them because we had, he hooked up the blood bag because the young lady—what do you call them? spoilers—she stabs him. And he put a blood bag on me.
Elizabeth: Wow.
Clayton: This is how tight we were. The show was so great, we were asked to participate in a college theater festival. We were the only high school.
Elizabeth: Wow.
Clayton: In the college—and that's when I started saying this theater thing is people believed what we did.
Elizabeth: As an adult, once you got further into theater, did you ever go back and talk to this teacher?
Clayton: No, I haven't. And that's something that, yeah, I think about. [00:10:00] I heard he had married someone that I knew, not well, but she actually went to the school. He was a smooth cat, he rode with the Jaguar. Oh yeah, Mr. Federico.
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