Entertainment

Clay Yocum owns the Dallas monopoly on big, macho roles in great American drama right now. You'd never guess he was almost a Mouseketeer.

The actor, who turns 31 this month, has a brooding presence and an explosive energy onstage. In the three years since his return to Texas from a year in New York, he has become a major figure in Dallas theater – but he complains he's been a little typecast.

"People tell me I'm like this attitude-driven hulk, that I remind them of a bull," he says. "I think of myself as more fragile."

Mr. Yocum won plaudits and awards for his performances in Dallas as a man full of rage in John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea , a bigoted big-league pitcher in Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out and the ne'er-do-well older brother in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman . He also created the role of the high school football coach who kills his star quarterback in his friend Steven Walters' world premiere, Snake Eyes at the Mardi Gras Motel, in April.

Milton Hinnant / DMN

Clay Yocum as Stanley Kowalski and Lydia MacKay as Blanche DuBois in Contemporary Theatre of Dallas' A Streetcar Named Desire

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Now, however, he's taking on the greatest, most macho role of all, Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Contemporary Theatre of Dallas' deluxe production, also starring Lydia Mackay and directed by René Moreno, runs through Aug. 31.

Mr. Yocum can identify with the worlds these characters come from. In fact, his father, Bill Yocum, once a college football coach, has returned to high school coaching in Lewisville after retiring from the oil business. His son, a huge sports fan, likes to spend his Sundays watching NFL games at the Denton bar a buddy of his owns. When he was a kid living in Oklahoma City, his parents would drive him to Norman to see the Sooner championship signs, and he graduated from the University of Oklahoma – in the theater program, of course.

Clay Yocum did play some football in high school, but his father didn't object when he quit sports to spend more time on the theater. He had actually begun pursuing a professional acting career at age 9. At that point, his mother moved with him to Los Angeles for a time so he could try to fulfill his dream. He landed a TV pilot that never made it to a network, and he thinks he would have been cast as a Mouseketeer, but "they just thought I was way too young."

Mr. Yocum says he was "a pretty skilled vocalist and dancer as a kid, but in high school I focused more on dramas. They just spoke to me more."

Besides his stage work, he appears in print advertising and has a small role in the forthcoming Samuel L. Jackson movie Soul Man, shot in Shreveport, La. During the day, he works with middle-school students.

"I kind of become their mentor and organizer," he says. "I grew up with guys who got into trouble, and I always knew how to communicate with them. At first these kids think of me as a drill sergeant, but I'm really not."

The young actor lists Marlon Brando as one of his heroes, but he has deliberately never watched the entire Streetcar movie because, he says, he always just knew he'd play Stanley and didn't want to be unduly influenced. The Brando movie he watches over and over again is Last Tango in Paris. Sometimes he'll just listen to one of his favorite films while doing chores around the house. The dialogue works its way into his psyche, he believes.

In fact, Mr. Yocum hasn't ever seen a Williams play onstage, either, except for a cutting in high school.

"Reading the play, though, Stanley is just so clear to me," the actor says. "You know where he's coming from. You know what he's expecting, what he's thinking. The men in my family are like that."

Not that he finds the character very likable.

"It's a shame the way he ends up," Mr. Yocum says. "Blanche isn't the only one who is destroyed at the end of the play – Stanley is responsible for his own destruction."

But this is one actor who's not afraid to play the bad guy. In fact, he revels in it.

"I like these guys who can be very hideous," he says. "I like to show their undiscovered sides."

In a part as rich as Stanley Kowalski, there's certainly always something new to be discovered, and Mr. Yocum is just the man to do it.