Exclusive! Claybourne Elder on Puppy Love, His Broadway Wedding & Making Music in Pippin with New Hubby Eric Rosen

Broadway star Claybourne Elder, 30, says he knew Eric Rosen, the 41-year-old artistic director of Kansas City Repertory Theatre, was the man he wanted to marry the minute a doggie named Diogi entered their lives.

“We were dating for about a year when we decided to adopt a dog,” Elder, who appeared on Broadway last season in Bonnie & Clyde, tells Broadway.com. “When we got [Diogi], Eric got really nervous that the dog wasn’t going to like him. I thought it was the sweetest thing I ever saw in my life. I fell completely head over heels for him at that moment and knew I wanted to start a family with him.”

With Diogi and a bevy of Broadway friends in attendance, Elder married Rosen on July 28, 2012 at Miriam’s Well, a “hippie” retreat center in Saugerties, New York run by Rosen’s mother Susan Rosen. “It was awesome,” Elder says. “Then we threw a big party in Utah for my friends and family. It was so meaningful to have people from all walks of my past come and celebrate my life.”

Elder, who grew up Mormon, is heartened by the support his family has shown for his nuptials. “My family is still very strongly practicing Mormon but they’re very supportive. Everyone showed up and everyone was very excited.”

Elder met Rosen when he was cast by director Moises Kaufman in a 2009 production of Into the Woods at Kansas City Rep. “We’d heard a lot about each other through Moises and then when I went out to Kansas City, we hung out a lot. And by the last week of the run, I had mustered up the courage to ask him out on a date.” Kaufman officiated the wedding alongside playwright Doug Wright.

After a honeymoon in Australia (“We spent two weeks in a camper driving north up the coast looking for abandoned beaches to camp out in.”), the couple starts rehearsals together on August 21 for an upcoming production of Pippin which runs September 14 to October 7 at Kansas City Rep.

Rosen is directing, and Elder is playing the title prince, a star turn that will require him to show off his additional skills as a musician. “I’m going to play four or five instruments: violin, ukelele, guitar, piano and maybe the bango or maybe the drums. It’s going to be huge—challenging but really exciting!”

This is the third time that the couple—who now split time between New York City and Kansas City, Missouri—have worked together professionally as a couple, and Elder says the transition from a personal collaboration to a professional one is easy. “We set good rules about leaving work at rehearsal and it’s all fine,” he says.

Mostly, Elder is thrilled to call Rosen his husband. “I’m just so excited to have him in my life. It feels awesome to be a married man!”

Photos by Laura Marie Duncan