Actor Clayton LeBouef is a serious man with a youthful face. He arrives for an interview dressed mostly in black -- including a black Center Stage T-shirt and a baseball cap with the legend, "CR24/7X9=JUSTICE."
More on the cap later. First, the T-shirt. He's wearing it because he's currently performing in Center Stage's production of August Wilson's "Two Trains Running." It's his third play at the theater -- not bad for an actor who showed up at an open audition there three years ago and beat the odds by being cast first in "Twelfth Night" and later in "Pericles."
For that matter, as a native New Yorker who has been based in Washington for almost two decades, LeBouef (pronounced "le-BUFF") has not only carved out a local career in the area's regional theaters, he has also beaten the odds by winning a role on NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street."
"A lot of people ask me, 'Why, if you want to be an actor, did you leave New York?'" LeBouef, 40, says, with a faint smile on his face. "The New York environment can swallow you. I always know you can go back."
His characters in "Two Trains Running" and "Homicide" are diametrically opposed. On "Homicide," LeBouef plays Capt. George Barnfather -- the young, Joe College-style boss to whom the show's detectives are answerable. In "Two Trains" -- the 1960s installment of Wilson's decade-by-decade chronicle of African-American life in the 20th century -- his character is a numbers runner named Wolf.
"I've never run numbers myself personally, but there's a lot of me in Wolf," the actor explains. He also recognizes Wolf from people he knew growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., where his father tended bar. "My father used to take me there as a youngster. Guys would like to flash their money -- like Wolf . . . I can relate to his TC struggle very much."
In "Two Trains," which takes place in a Pittsburgh diner in 1969, playwright Wilson presents seven characters who have different methods of getting by and of getting what they believe they're entitled to. The diner owner, for example, is a legitimate businessman; his newest customer, Sterling, has just been released from prison and could be back there soon; Wolf, of course, runs numbers.
Wilson doesn't make value judgment about these characters, and neither does LeBouef, who instead describes Wolf's profession as part of "the underground economy -- and that doesn't necessarily make the people bad."
At the same time, he says, "I've seen money cause a lot of problems. I didn't want to be a person who let money control me. Wolf does let money control him."
"Two Trains" has been criticized for being less overtly connected to its era than most of Wilson's plays -- such as "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," which is about the exploitation of black recording artists in the 1920s, or "Fences," about a black baseball star who's over the hill by the time the game is integrated after World War II.
Turbulence offstage
But LeBouef insists that having the turbulence of the '60s offstage in "Two Trains" doesn't make the play any less true to its era. "I think it has a very strong connection [to the '60s]. A lot of stuff is happening outside. When you scale it down, you make it poignant, and August's a master at that," says the actor, who met the playwright when he understudied the roles of Wolf and Sterling during the play's 1991 pre-Broadway run at the Kennedy Center.
Like his relationship with Center Stage, LeBouef's continuing role on "Homicide: Life on the Street" also started modestly -- with an audition for a small, single-episode role of an alcoholic. At the time, he was wearing his hair in long braids, as theatergoers may remember from seeing him in "Twelfth Night" or "Pericles."
After the audition, he was offered the captain's role but was told he'd have to cut his hair. He did.
"I'm so grateful to Mr. Levinson," LeBouef says of the series' co-producer, Baltimore native Barry Levinson. "He's a groundbreaker. He's changing the aesthetic. Killing is becoming entertainment, [but] that's not his aesthetic -- it's what happens afterwards. I couldn't have asked for a better way to enter television."
He's been so impressed by the show's emphasis on the aftermath of crime that he'd like to work with victims' groups in Baltimore and Washington.
Speaking to groups is something LeBouef does every chance he gets. He was participating in a post-play discussion after a performance of "Twelfth Night" in 1991 when someone asked how he felt, as a black man, about performing Shakespeare. In his response, LeBouef mentioned a turn-of-the-century black actress and political organizer named Henrietta Vinton Davis.
A heroine's story
That led to Center Stage's commissioning him to write a play, "Shero! -- The Livication of Henrietta Vinton Davis," which he is still developing and which had a public reading at Washington's National Museum of Women in the Arts in September. ("Shero," he explains, is a word for "heroine" that avoids the unfortunate homonym, "heroin"; "livication" means "you keep the spirit of the person alive.")
This isn't his first script. In 1987 he wrote a play about South Africa called "Tied-Apart" that was performed at Washington's Sanctuary Theatre. Five years ago, he founded a theater company in Washington, the Zhanra Group, dedicated to helping actors support each other's work.
LeBouef became interested in theater at Yonkers High School and went on to study drama at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. He left after two years, however, partly to earn some money, and partly because the school was "a little bit of a cultural shock. A lot of stuff I was doing I thought was too corny. It didn't relate to me."
A series of odd jobs followed, ranging from security guard in the projects in Yonkers to drug counselor in Washington. He's also worked as a club deejay and was in a rap duo called Cowealtha with one of his brothers.
Eventually, LeBouef found his way back into theater. Besides Center Stage, his regional credits include Arena Stage and the Source Theatre Company in Washington, and the People's Light and Theatre Company outside Philadelphia. His first job in Baltimore was portraying Ethopian Emperor Haile Selassie in the telecast of "The Eagle and the Lion," winner of the 1987 black playwrights competition co-sponsored by WMAR-TV and Arena Players.
These days, TV brings him back to Baltimore fairly regularly, since "Homicide" is shot here. It's an easy commute for LeBouef, who lives in Washington with his wife of 19 years and their 3-year-old daughter. He will be filming a new episode during the run of "Two Trains."
Positive images
When he isn't performing, LeBouef is especially interested in spreading the gospel of African-centered education and, particularly, of countering negative images.
That brings us back to the legend on the cap he's wearing. "CR24/7X9=JUSTICE," he explains, stands for: "counter racism 24 hours a day, seven days a week." The "9," he says, "represents nine areas of'people activity': economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war. And justice is defined as balance among people."
Clayton LeBouef would appear to set a good example. "People will begin to focus on who you are, if you are centered," he says, speaking as a man who's found balance within himself.
'Two Trains Running'
Where: Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays (no performance Thanksgiving); 7:30 p.m. Sundays (except Dec. 4); matinees at 2 p.m. most Saturdays and Sundays and at 1 p.m. Nov. 30. Through Dec. 18.
Tickets: $10-$35
Call: (410) 332-0033; TDD: (410) 332-4240