Miami native embraces role as iconic Noah in ‘The Notebook’ and life on the road

Coral Reef Senior High and UM grad Ken Wulf Clark stars  as Middle Noah with Alysha Deslorieux as Allie in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook” coming to the Arsht Center Tuesday, May 5 through Sunday, May 10. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

Miami-born actor Ken Wulf Clark has traded the tour bus of the national Broadway company of “The Notebook,” in which he plays middle Noah, for a Subaru Outback.

Speaking in an interview from a stop at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, just before the show’s arrival in Miami at the Adrienne Arsht Center opening Tuesday, May 5 through Sunday, May 10, Wulf Clark is waiting for his wife, Logan, to get back to the hotel room with the car.

The Three Noahs: Kyle Mangold (Younger Noah), Beau Gravitte (Older Noah) and Ken Wulf Clark (Middle Noah) in national Broadway tour of “The Notebook.” (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

She’s six months pregnant with their first baby, a boy, and an actress too, who he met at the University of Miami. The couple has put the entire contents of their New York apartment in storage and are on the road. “I didn’t want her to be in our apartment and some of her work she can do remotely, so it was just like, let’s get a car and let’s do this.”

It’s that take-a-leap-of-faith practicality that’s served him well in his life and career.

As a student at Coral Reef Senior High School, he was into athletics and hadn’t dreamed of theater as a way to make a living. “I was on the football team and lacrosse. I thought maybe I could do something with that. But it became clear that a music scholarship was more likely than anything else and I needed a scholarship.”

Everything shifted when Coral Reef’s choral department staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” and he played the comical character Ko-Ko.

“I think the moment I made an audience laugh on purpose that’s when the chemicals hit my brain and that was it.”

Still, he didn’t take it seriously. “I was considering going into the military,” he says. But he had teachers who kept encouraging him.

Ken Wulf Clark, growing up in Homestead, didn’t have ambitions to be a full-time actor while growing up. “I was considering going into the military,” he says. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

“I had some voice teachers who said, ‘You know, this could be a good niche for you with your voice type and your physicality and your presence. This is something you could be successful at.’ And they didn’t really encourage a lot of people to go into music or theater performance.” He took their advice.

For college, he had two Florida schools in mind, Florida State University and University of Miami. “I auditioned at both and UM offered me a better scholarship, and I was very relieved because I didn’t want to have to stop rooting for the ‘Canes,” he says, referring to UM’s football team, which he had been cheering for growing up in Homestead.

“My dad worked for the Florida Marine Patrol for 37 years and South Florida was where his work was.”

He’s excited to come back to Miami and has plans beyond performances at the Arsht. “I’m gonna go play golf at Palmetto Golf Course; that’s where my grandfather taught me to play.”

Wulf Clark currently plays middle Noah in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook,” the adult version of the character still holding onto a long-ago summer romance with Allie Hamilton.

Miami’s Ken Wulf Clark, seen here with Alysha Deslorieux in “The Notebook,” has packed up a Subaru and is taking the tour on his own road trip. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

Made famous on film by Ryan Gosling, Wulf Clark steps into one of romance’s most iconic characters. He describes Noah as someone who “every day reaffirms himself as this immovable object of a person who believes that somewhere out there this woman is still thinking of him the way that he thinks of her.”

The actor had never seen the movie or read the Nicholas Sparks book when he first auditioned, choosing to keep it at arm’s length. “I got a call back and then I got another call back and I was thinking to myself, ‘maybe I just don’t watch it. They like what I’m doing, and I didn’t want to muddy the waters.’”

Once he got the part and started rehearsing, whatever the character became was his “because I had nothing else in my head.” Before the tour began in Cleveland, he told his wife,
It’s time.” He finally watched the film. “It’s beautiful,” he says. His biggest takeaway? “Heck, I’ll watch Rachel McAdams read the phone book.”

With the musical stage adaptation, the story leans more heavily into the couple’s later years, says Wulf Clark, in which older Allie’s dementia shapes the narrative as Noah retells their love story to her while she’s in a care facility.

The Alzheimer’s Association is a community partner in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook.”

Wulf Clark says audiences often respond personally to that aspect of the show. “We get a lot of feedback from people in the audience who have similar stories.” He says while he hasn’t experienced what it’s like to go through the process with a family member or anyone close to him,” he hopes that the show offers some light. “I hope there is some catharsis from we’re doing because I know it’s painful.”

Ken Wulf Clark with Alysha Deslorieux in the infamous rain scene of “The Notebook” in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook.” The actor says they get rained on for real in each performance. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

And that famous rain scene. Wulf Clark gets to play it out as middle Noah. “There’s a rain machine and yes, I get drenched sometimes twice a day,” he says, adding that there’s a small reprieve albeit little. “We call it a screen of rain and sometimes we’re upstage of it, but we still get rained on every day.”

He says he wouldn’t trade his life for anything right now. Touring in the first national Broadway production since its launch last September, the 37-year-old is booked through May 2027.

By then, he’ll be a dad. So, will they still be traveling around in the Subaru?

“My wife’s family is in Sarasota so once we get to Tampa at the end of May, she’ll stay there until the baby comes in July. I have paternity leave, so I’ll head down there.”

By the time the tour winds toward its scheduled end in May 2027 (it will swing through Fort Lauderdale at the Broward Center in 2027 starting Tuesday, March 9 through Sunday, March 14), Clark will have logged as many miles in the Subaru as he has performances as Noah.

After graduation from the University of Miami, Wulf Clark sold his Volvo and moved to Harlem for a shot at a full-time theater career. For this tour, he’s given up the couple’s New York apartment lease and is already planning for the next phase of life on the road.

“As soon as the kid’s old enough to get in the car seat and us not freaking out about it, we’ll all be back on the road.”

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