Stories of a Gay Mormon Dad
Claybourne Elder has a shorter commute to perform in Provincetown this year than he did last summer. The Broadway and television star is spending this summer in Dennis, where his husband, Eric Rosen, is the new artistic director at Cape Playhouse.
Elder also has had more time to prepare his new show than he did for his Provincetown debut last year. Shortly before its premiere, his co-star and interlocutor Seth Rudetsky tested positive for Covid, requiring Elder to quickly switch to his then-still-evolving solo program of songs, stories, and comedy.
Elder has been touring the show nationally to sold-out houses. On Sunday, July 7, he will open producer Mark Cortale’s “Broadway @ Town Hall” season. Along with Broadway numbers, the show includes pop songs and a rendition of a lullaby he sings to his son.
“Then I tell stories about my life, growing up Mormon, being gay, and being a dad,” he says. “It’s not dirty, but it is a PG-13 experience. I tell the truth.”
Elder’s confessional style stems from lifelong interests in journaling and essay writing, inspired by a journalist mom who chronicled his childhood in humorous newspaper columns. “I wanted to write something I was scared to talk about in front of people and share some vulnerable stories,” he says.
The show has received heartfelt reactions from audiences. “Messages I get from people have been really moving,” says Elder. “This thing I thought would just be something really fun to do has turned into something really meaningful and become my favorite thing to perform.”
A Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel award nominee whose Broadway credits include Bonnie and Clyde and the 2022 revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, Elder also stars in a supporting role in HBO’s The Gilded Age, which will start filming its third season this month in Newport, R.I. The costumes and sets, he says, feel “like jumping back in time in the most magical way.”
Tickets for the July 7 show are $50 to $150, plus fees. See ptowntownhall.com for information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Eleanor Score at the Provincetown Arts Society
Eleanor Score has been dragging enormous boards to the pier to paint on. “These are big paintings, and they were painted on-site,” she says. “I’ve been working almost compulsively.”
Score has spent the last 30 summers in Provincetown. She rises at 5:30 every morning to paint in her third-floor attic studio overlooking Provincetown Harbor. Her house on the bend of Commercial Street in the West End is set back from the sidewalk and hidden behind a row of bushes. She holds frequent yard sales, always with a glass of white wine in hand. (She knows her stuff: her late husband, Stephen Score, was an antiques dealer in Boston.)
Born in Marion in 1949, Score graduated from the Boston University School of Fine Arts in 1972. “I married my teacher,” she says. “We had a great life. I grew up a WASP and now I’m an eccentric!” She later studied with Paul Bowen and Chet Jones in Provincetown and had her first show in Provincetown at Julie Heller Gallery in 2006.
Score paints on found wood and canvas. In View From Bradford Street, vibrant colors — cool pink rose, lavender, Olympic blue, and sapphire — provide a foundation. In addition to painting harbor scenes, Score paints angels and mermaids. When she got tired of painting mermaids, she started painting mermen. “It was a big hit,” she says. “I haven’t had a bearded one — maybe for Bear Week.”
In Provincetown With Fishing Boats, Score decks out the town in more fearless color. An almost neon pink orchid hits the side of a small house near the library. The unfinished wood board gives the bright oil paint a layer of texture and grit.
“I might just add one stroke of blue,” she says looking at Carpe Diem, a painting of her sink, which overlooks the harbor. “I’ve been a little reclusive since I lost my husband and I want to have spirit and for everyone to come to this show.”
The Provincetown Arts Society will host “A Closer Look at Eleanor Score” in the courtyard of the Mary Heaton Vorse house (466 Commercial St.) on Saturday, July 6 from 5 to 7 p.m. Tickets are donation based, and space is limited. See provincetownartssociety.com for information. —Pat Kearns
Looking Back at 60 Years of Writing
Last year, Michael Glenn decided to sort through his writing. “A friend of mine who loves to look at old photos and letters told me to go up to my attic and look at what I have,” says Glenn. “I found I had over 100 stories I had written over the course of the years.” A retired psychiatrist and social activist, Glenn, 86, has maintained a constant writing practice since he was a medical student more than 60 years ago.
He chose about 20 stories for a collection that was published last September and traces the evolution of his writing style in pieces that explore both the the mundanity and the profundity of everyday life. Glenn will read from the collection at Wellfleet Public Library (55 West Main St.) on Monday, July 8 at 7 p.m. His wife, Susan Jhirad, with whom he shares a summer home in Wellfleet, will assist him with “a little bit of theater”: alternating narrative voices, they’ll read a story about a medical student who gets attached to a patient and asks to stay in touch with her.
Other stories in the collection invite readers to look through the windows of a 1970s couple trying an open marriage, a man reencountering a former crush at a 50th high school reunion, and a family doctor reading the obituary of an influential teacher.
“I tend to write about situations in which there is some kind of reversal or betrayal,” says Glenn. “Things turn out to be not what the characters want them to be.” While not strictly autobiographical, “almost every story starts with a feeling I’ve had,” he adds. “I don’t do well with ‘Let’s pretend.’ ”
The reading is free. Copies of Glenn’s Selected Stories will be available for sale. For more information, see wellfleetlibrary.org. —Aden Choate
Painting the New and the Old
Patte Ormsby’s triptych is propped against the table in the living room of her parents’ house in Wellfleet: a three-part series that depicts the undulating shape of Great Island, seen from a distance across Wellfleet Harbor. A smaller painting, also a vision of Great Island, sits on a chair nearby. Seven paintings are laid out on the couch. These are the works that will be shown in “Great,” an exhibition at AMZehnder Gallery that runs from Thursday, July 4 to Tuesday, July 16.
Ormsby, who lives in Virginia but comes to the Cape whenever she can, says her work is generally about “finding the sacred quality of paintings.” She loves Italian Renaissance and medieval holy works: the rich jewel colors and tone of gold leaf, the “cracking of age,” and the timeless quality that contributes to what Ormsby calls a certain “feeling of spirituality.” In her paintings, she tries to isolate those elements that suggest the sacred. “I don’t want the holy people,” she says. “I don’t want the religion. I just want that feeling.”
Most of her paintings are “about memory,” she says, and aren’t usually literal. The scenes of Great Island are a departure from her more typical style, as seen in the abstract washes of frothy color and metallic sheen in the seven paintings on the couch, which were inspired by Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” For “Great,” she sought a different sort of timelessness: the view of Great Island from across the water.
Whether abstract or literal, Ormsby’s paintings are recognizable in their patterns of construction. For the impossibly deep and richly hued water and sky in the paintings of Great Island, she uses dozens of layers of spray paint. She adds crackle with a process that involves combining incompatible oil-based and water-based varnishes, later defining the cracks with paint and rinsing everything with water. She uses composition gold leaf and iron dust for the island itself and oxidizes the materials with a patina solution. The gold turns green and the iron rusts. The result is paintings that look older than they are and recall those ancient sacred works she loves.
As an artist who often works in the abstract, Ormsby takes notice of the different ways her work is interpreted. Ormsby recalls discussing the work with a viewer.
“I never mentioned the holy stuff,” she said. “And they said, ‘Wow, it’s like an altarpiece.’ So sometimes people get it, you know?”
There will be an opening reception for the show on Saturday, July 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. See amzehnder.com for information. —Dorothea Samaha
Back to the ’80s and ’90s
Aspiring rock star Drew, small-town girl Sherrie, and their friends are looking for answers as they wrestle with their futures. They hope to find them while singing the music of Styx, Whitesnake, Journey, Bon Jovi, and other bands in Rock of Ages.
The “kick-ass” jukebox musical, which is playing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Orleans (120 Main St.) through July 21, tells the story of saving a legendary music venue from strip-mall developers (cue Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It”). Since its premiere on Broadway in 2009, it has proved to be a hit on Cape Cod: Sonia Schonning directed its local debut at Cape Cod Community College in 2017, and after directing a Barnstable Comedy Club revival in 2022, she felt the show “still had legs” for another production on the Outer Cape. (“Don’t Stop Believin’ ” indeed.)
“My high school, college, and club-and-wedding band years were the ’80s and ’90s, and these songs bring back your glory days of youth,” she says. “And with the younger folks, we’re rediscovering the music through their eyes.”
Several cast and band members are returning from the Barnstable production, including Provincetown’s Beau Jackett as arrogant rocker Stacee Jaxx. Tala Schonning again shares the role of Sherrie (with Caroline Gerety), and Max Dexter changes roles to star as dreamer Drew. The show also features Randy Doyle and Jennifer Almeida, who led the Academy’s production of Sound of Music last month. Rehearsals were coordinated around actors’ busy schedules with other Cape shows.
Switching from the large proscenium stages of other venues to the Academy’s intimate arena has been a positive change, Schonning says, in allowing the performers to talk to and involve audience and band members. “The audience is in on the joke from the beginning, and they can dance and sing,” she says.
Rock of Ages runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through July 21. Tickets are $25-$35 at academyplayhouse.org. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
