Sacramento remembers a theater legend: Ed Claudio, co-founder of B Street, dies at 77

Ed Claudio’s office is cramped and wonderfully awkward. Its angled spaces reflect so much of what he valued. Books on theater and manuscripts of plays are stacked everywhere. There are old couches, old chairs and old tables all piled with books. The walls are completely blanketed with 30 years of posters from his theater productions and newspaper reviews and stories about them. They were shows Claudio produced or directed or performed in — or some combination of the three.

Theater was Claudio’s life, and he devoted himself to it — becoming an extraordinary practitioner and teacher of the craft. Claudio was instrumental in fostering and developing professional theater in the region as an actor, director, producer and most importantly, a teacher. Claudio died Jan. 5 at his apartment in Sacramento. He was 77 years old. His son, Michael Claudio, confirmed the death but did not give a cause.

Ed Claudio helped found Fantasy Theatre for Children (the B Street Touring Company), the B Street Theatre and he started Actors’ Workshop and Actors’ Theatre.

Claudio trained at the famed Stella Adler Studio for Acting in New York with Adler herself. That transformative experience pushed him to become a distinctive actor, prolific producer and thoughtful director. By 1988, Claudio had already served in the military, driven a New York City taxi cab, been an art dealer and been married twice. That winter, his old college pal Tim Busfield asked him to come out to Sacramento from New York and help with a fledgling professional theater company he was putting together with his brother Buck.

“Ed was the perfect guy to come out and just say yes,” said Buck Busfield, B Street Theatre’s producing artistic director. “He wasn’t a young man to uproot his life, move out here, and help us out, become a part of it.”

Claudio’s formative years

Claudio was born to Edward Robert Claudio Sr. and Violet Kalleen in Jersey City, New Jersey, across Hudson Bay from New York, where he would eventually live. His parents divorced when he was young and he lived with his mother.

Sister Lynn Shandy, by his father’s second marriage, remembers a devoted brother whom she would see on weekends when he visited. “He was very loving and very protective,” Shandy said. He often took her into New York to see shows and couldn’t pass a bookstore without going in.

Claudio graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens and was drafted into the Army, where he served from 1965-69, stationed in West Germany. He was married three times — to Beverly Francis, Patricia Sears (mother of children Michael and Lauren) and the late Michelle Barnett. While living in New York, Claudio drove a taxi, worked in publishing, was a successful art dealer and acted in off-broadway productions.

Claudio began performing in the Fantasy Theatre for Children, now known as the B Street Touring Company. At 45, he is still the oldest member to perform with the company.

He also started his own teaching and training studio called The Actor’s Workshop. Though it was a training studio, it might well have been a life lessons seminar. Claudio created a family in the generations of people who came through it. Hundreds who went through his program became theater professionals or worked in film and television, including the Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated Jessica Chastain, Academy Award-nominated Greta Gerwig and Academy Award winner Brie Larson.

Claudio’s continuing influence will be felt through the generations of actors who he taught there.

“When you studied with Ed, he cut through your work with a precision that spoke of a passion for truth on the stage and years of experience and training,” Rick Gott wrote after learning of Claudio’s death. Gott studied acting with Claudio for several years before taking a job teaching theater at Natomas Charter School-Performing and Fine Arts Academy, where he is now in his 24th year.

“You would do a monologue for him, and the first thing he’d ask was, ‘How’d you feel?’ After you told him that you thought it went well, he would acknowledge that, then find the one thing that would make it even more honest,” Gott wrote.

Starting B Street Theatre

In 1992, Claudio was in the first B Street Theatre production, “Mass Appeal,” with his old East Tennessee State college theater pal Tim Busfield, whom he met in the mid-70s, when both studied theater. They had previously done the two-man play as a fundraiser for their college, and Busfield knew they could put it on quickly and efficiently.

“Buck showed me the space at 2711 B Street. I was on a Christmas break from the filming of the movie ‘Sneakers,’ and on the spot I said, ‘Ed and I open in ‘Mass Appeal’ in one month,’ ” Busfield said. “Without Ed, I can’t imagine I would have made that decision and commitment. Ed was a great actor, director, producer, teacher, friend and collaborator.”

The next show they did was Aaron Sorkin’s “Hidden In This Picture,” with the writer himself in the cast along with Claudio and Busfield. Claudio appeared in over 30 other productions at B Street Theatre, in hundreds of productions at other theaters, produced and/or directed over 150 of his own shows, and appeared in numerous films and televisions shows.

By his own estimation, Claudio’s Workshop put more than 2,000 actors on stage over its 34 years of operation. He closed a show just days before his death.

“I came to Ed as a very young, untrained actor. Ed took me seriously,” said actor and director Elisabeth Nunziato. “He supported and challenged me. Ed would sacrifice anything if he thought it was in the best interest of my actor training.”

Stories of his commitment to mentorship are common. He wrote hundreds of letters of recommendation for college applications. If an actor needed a monologue for an audition, he would find 10 and then coach them through the preparation. Casting agencies routinely called him for recommendations when trying to fill roles for commercials and television spots. Claudio often brought students to productions around town and took them to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which he loved for its dedication to classic texts.

“Actor coaching is extremely intimate,” Nunziato said. “One can easily and irrevocably damage an actor if they’re not careful, and Ed had over 30 years of an impeccable reputation. He was a loving, supportive, ambitious, safe place for actors.”

A trusted friend, a lifetime of achievement

In 1997 when Claudio opened his Actor’s Theatre of Sacramento in a little black box space on Del Paso Boulevard, the first production was Eugene O’Neill’s epic “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Classic plays became a staple for the scrappy company as playwrights such as Anton Chekov, Samuel Beckett, along with O’Neill, were commonly performed. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from SARTA (Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance) and Sacramento Arts Commission’s Arts Educator award.

Anthony D’Juan worked with Claudio for nearly 10 years writing and directing plays, performing, and teaching classes at the Workshop.

“You always knew where you stood with Ed Claudio. He was not ambiguous,” D’Juan said. “He taught me the dangers of ambiguity on stage and in life.” For D’Juan and many others, Claudio was not just a professional mentor but also a trusted friend. “He cared about your life,” D’Juan said. “He treated you like the age you were, whether you were acting like it or not.”

His son, Michael, said his father loved learning (he nearly completed a doctorate in theater at Florida State University) and passed that on to himself and his sister Lauren. “He operated from a place of love when it came to everything he did,” Claudio said. “Behind that veneer of the irascible gruff East Coast New Yorker, he was actually the most gentle of souls.”

Ed Claudio is survived by his sister, Lynn Shandy; children, Lauren and Michael Claudio; and thousands of students and audience members who were lifted and enlightened by his work. There will be a celebration of life on March 7 at B Street’s Sofia Theatre in Sacramento.