Arts & Entertainment

No walk in the ‘Park’ for Claybourne Elder

George’ actor Elder on the rigors of artistic life

Published

12 years ago

August 14, 2014

Brynn O'Malley, Claybourne Elder, Sunday in the Park with George, gay news, Washington Blade

Brynn O’Malley as Dot and Claybourne Elder as George in ‘Sunday in the Park with George.’ (Photo by Margot Schulman; courtesy Signature Theatre)

‘Sunday in the Park with George’

Through Sept. 21

Signature Theatre

4200 Campbell Ave. Arlington

703-820-9771

At 32, Claybourne Elder is living the theater dream with a charmed career. The handsome out actor’s first big break came playing Hollis Bessemer, the young gay heir in the original off-Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Road Show” in 2008.

“I’d just moved to New York and went on an open chorus call never dreaming I’d be cast,” he says. “They asked me back and I got the part. Suddenly I was playing across from two actors I revere, Michael Cerveris and Alexander Gemignani, and Sondheim was sitting around drinking coffee and giving notes. It was unreal.”

Elder has worked nonstop ever since on Broadway and beyond, interpreting extant parts and creating roles like Clyde Barrow’s likable brother Buck in the Broadway musical “Bonnie & Clyde,” and aviator Charles Lindbergh in “Take Flight.” He played Ollie, a New Orleans prostitute in “One Arm,” Moisés Kaufman’s dramatic adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ same-titled short story and unfinished screenplay.

And now he’s tackling the part of George in Signature Theatre’s production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s wondrous musical “Sunday in the Park with George,” a role Elder has had his eye, and ear, on for a long time. The story focuses on the struggles of French painter Georges Seurat (called George in the musical). He’s surrounded by his lover Dot, and his masterpiece “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte” and those characters depicted in the painting. In the second act, George’s sculptor descendant (also named George and also played by Elder) strives to make sense of life, love and art in 1980s New York City.

For many musical theater lovers, “Sunday in the Park with George” holds a special place in the canon.

“It’s my favorite among all the children,” says Elder laughing. “It’s true. The show has so many universal themes. People connect to it in deep ways. It’s an emotionally charged theatrical event.”

“And my part is magically written,” he adds. “I couldn’t ask for a part written more perfectly in my range. I’m a tenor with a dash of baritone. My songs have lovely rich lower things and then go up high. It’s technically challenging but in a very pleasurable way, never needlessly challenging. Sondheim never writes music to impress. He doesn’t have to.”

Matthew Gardiner, the Signature production’s director, concurs on “Sunday’s” specialness. “Ever since first watching the original Broadway production on VHS tape in middle school, I’ve always wanted to do this musical. The score sung by Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters is forever seared on my brain. It’s perfection and for my money, it has some of the best music ever written. It speaks to what it is to be an artist. And what it means to connect with people and achieve harmony in our lives.”

Finding the right actor to play George was imperative to Signature’s production, Gardiner says. “There were casting sessions in New York and Washington. We were looking for a strong, quiet presence. There’s something serious going on behind Elder’s eyes. In tandem with him being a fantastic singer and a great actor, he’s a likable and engaging person — someone to root for. That’s not something you can direct.”

Elder, who graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in dramaturgy, confesses to being sort of a geek. His major allowed him to study works within historical and philosophical contexts. As an actor, he uses extensive research to get a handle on his characters. And it works. Fans sometimes don’t recognize him from one show to the next. “Well, that’s what actors do,” Elder says. “We disappear into the role.”

It’s not as easy to disappear on TV. Last year Elder took a break from theater to appear on CW’s “The Carrie Diaries,” the now-canceled prequel to “Sex and the City.”

“From that show I got recognized by 15-year-old girls and gay men a lot,” he says, recalling one bar visit with family. “A patron wouldn’t stop screaming ‘Pete!’ It took me a while to realize he was calling me. Pete was my character’s name on the show. That was a first.”

Georges Seurat died at just 31 without ever having sold a painting. Still, Elder feels connected to him. “He’s consumed by art. I can relate to that. Theater requires me to be in a room every day performing. When you’re in a show in New York you don’t leave town. You miss weddings and life events all the time. That’s just how it is.”

Fortunately, Elder’s husband, director Eric Rosen, is in the business and understands how it works. The couple is based in New York City and Kansas City, Mo., where Rosen heads up the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. They work hard to spend quality time together and stay close with their families. Elder describes his Mormon parents as “the most liberal conservatives you’ll ever meet.”

Next up, Elder is slated to play the young doctor in John Doyle’s off-Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Allegro.” Rehearsals start the day after Signature’s “Sunday” closes. And the dream continues.

Related Topics:Bonnie & Clyde Claybourne Elder Moises Kaufman One Arm Road Show Stephen Sondheim Sunday in the Park with George Take Flight

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Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam

Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon

Published

1 hour ago

August 2, 2026

Michael K. Lavers

Kylie Minogue with Madonna at the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam on Aug. 2, 2026. (Photo courtesy of Cejlon Studio)

AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.

The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.

“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.

Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.

Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”

(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)

“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”

Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.

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A post shared by Kylie Minogue (@kylieminogue)

Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.

Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.

“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”

Theater

Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth

First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’

Published

10 hours ago

August 2, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Reggie D. White (Photo by Ambe J. Williams)

Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.

A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.

White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”

Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.

“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”

WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?

REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.

BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?

WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.

I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.

These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.

Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.

BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?

WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.

I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].

BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?

WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.

BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?

WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.

Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.