Claybourne Elder

Claybourne Elder is an American actor, singer, and writer born on April 21, 1982, in Springville, Utah. The youngest of eight siblings, he was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His mother worked as a schoolteacher and his father as a carpenter. Elder played violin in his school orchestra and pursued early acting training at the Moscow Klasse Centre in Russia. He subsequently enrolled at Brigham Young University but was expelled for being gay. He went on to earn a degree in dramaturgy and directing from the University of Utah.

Elder originated several notable roles across his stage career. He created the role of Ollie Olson in One Arm, directed by Moisés Kaufman, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Play in 2012. He originated the role of Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde, Hollis Bessemer in Stephen Sondheim's Road Show, and Michael Victor in Venice. His cast recordings include Bonnie and Clyde, Road Show, Venice, and Sunday in the Park with George.

Off-Broadway, Elder received a 2015 Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Musical for Allegro at Classic Stage. Regionally, he played the title role of George in Sunday in the Park with George at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, in 2014. He reprised work connected to that production in the concert performances at New York City Center in October 2016, and then on Broadway in the 2017 revival, where he played the Soldier and Alex while also understudying Jake Gyllenhaal.

His Broadway credits span from 2011 to 2021 and include Bonnie and Clyde, Sunday in the Park with George, the play Torch Song, and the 2021 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company, in which he played Andy. Elder also played Gaston in the 2023 production of Beauty and the Beast at The Muny. On television, he guest-starred as Pete O'Malley in the second season of The CW series The Carrie Diaries.

Elder and director Eric Rosen were married on July 28, 2012, in New York State. In 2017, the couple had a son through surrogacy.

In 2007, as a 23-year-old visiting New York City, Elder was standing in the standing-room section of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee when a stranger named Mark Howell approached him, observed his enthusiasm for theater, and gave him $200 to spend on a ticket to a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Elder attended that production and credited both the show and Howell's generosity as the deciding factors in his move to New York to pursue acting. By 2022, Elder was starring in the Broadway revival of Company alongside Patti LuPone, who had appeared in that same Sweeney Todd production, and simultaneously appearing in the HBO series The Gilded Age with Michael Cerveris, who had played the title role in the revival. Elder was reunited with Howell and purchased theater tickets for strangers as a way of paying the gesture forward. In July 2022, Elder recounted the story on an episode of the WBEZ radio program This American Life, which focused on acts of kindness from strangers.