Joseph Scott Ford is ANPF’s home-grown playwright this year: Born and raised in Little Rock, he now calls Nashville his home, but says he’s always dreamed of bringing his art back to his home state. His writing credits include “Not Even The Good Things” (Theatre Row, NYC), “Sasparilla” (Shiyr Productions), “Mainly The Rabbit”, “Penthouse Play”, “The Only Mountain in Texas”, “The Catch”, and “Montauk Rising”. Acting credits include Dana in the world premiere of “Primating” (Arkansas Repertory Theater), Austin in “True West” (Producer’s Club, Company of Fools), and various roles with Upstart Creatures Theatre Company, where he was an ensemble member. He studied acting with William Esper and holds a BA in economics and history from Vanderbilt University.

Ford’s play, described as “a genre-bending dark comedy about trying to do the right thing”, received its first reading in front of an audience this past Sunday at the Momentary and was met with an enthusiastic reception. This week, Ford will return to the rehearsal room with his team to work for one more week before its final reading. But first, he took a break to chat with us about his experience so far at ANPF.

You have a 501 area code! Are you originally from Arkansas?

I am from Little Rock, Arkansas, born and raised here—day one through senior year of high school. I graduated high school from Little Rock Christian, and then went to Vanderbilt in Nashville for undergrad, moved to New York and was in New York for a few years doing the acting thing and then the playwright thing. .

At what time of your life did you first get involved in theater?

When I was young, I did a third grade musical, and then I did a small, independent film that actually filmed in Eureka Springs called “Mr. Christmas” when I was 12. But it terrified me, to be honest. So I didn't get back to it until I was in college, where I started doing a lot of improv, and then some more dramatic work, and then moved to New York City to study acting with a guy named Bill Esper—who, actually, small world, was Bob Ford's acting teacher at Rutgers.

Improv seems like it would kind of be a gateway drug to playwriting! So tell me about that first play: was it an accident or quite intentional?

That's a great question. It was mostly accidental. I did a two-year Acting Program with Bill that finished in 2016. When I was an undergraduate, I started to battle depression for the first time in my life, and that lasted for a couple of years. I had a really hard time, as you can imagine, acting. I finally sort of figured out what was going on and sought treatment and was fortunate and got better rapidly. And on the other side of that, my wife, Kelsey, who's reading in the play, and has been a part of its creation from the beginning— she wrote me a short play. And I wrote her one back, she wrote one back and I wrote a short play back. That's how it started. And then I sat down and wrote my first play. I wasn't sure what it was—it was very much a ‘one moment at a time’ kind of thing. I didn't have any experience, and no one had taught me how to write plays. But I'd spent enough time, I think, working on scripts from the other side, that for whatever reason, things started to click, and these characters started to come out and the story started to come out. And that is how that started.

Edwin Green, Kelsey Claire (seated) and Bradley Campbell (background) perform on Sunday, July 17 at the Momentary during “Responders” first performance. On Sunday, July 23, you can see the show performed at TheatreSquared.

Obviously, you don’t have to be an actor to write a play—but do you think that having that acting experience lends something to your playwriting?

I certainly hope so. I really try to write with actors in mind. I have a lot of respect for actors and what they can do, and how they can bring texts to life. And as I write, I think I really write as an actor, if that makes sense. I try to connect viscerally with each and every character’s circumstance and situation and respond as truthfully as I can moment to moment. It's a very emotional and labor-intensive process, because I think I am, in a way, acting my way through it, as multiple characters.

Do you ever find yourself writing parts for yourself in your plays?

Not intentionally, no. I wrote a play after ‘Responders’, called ‘Penthouse Play’, that I would love to get developed somewhere. And I wrote a part that I could play, years down the road, if that's how the timing went. And that's still on the table. But it wasn't my intention. I intend to write characters that I can actually never play, and I think that's a lot of fun. You get to meet all sorts of different artists that way. At TheatreSquared, the team that we've brought in, and our director vicki, and the dramaturg, Cam, and Dex and Bob—it's just been so amazing. They've brought in such a great team. And that makes my job so much easier, because they make me look good—but they're the ones that are really doing the fantastic work.

Is this the first time you've ever done any sort of play development workshop or process like this?

It is—I've done it all independently until this moment. TheaterSquared is the first theater that said, ‘Hey, do you want to develop this with us?’ It's a really a great opportunity, and I'm so thankful, and I am loving every second of it.

You’ve had a week in the rehearsal room and we’re coming up on your first performance in front of an audience this weekend. Can you talk a little bit about how the process has worked for you so far?

Well, that's a great question, too. One of the first things I think I'd say is vicki, the director, and the actors have all just loved the piece. And when you're a writer, and you're working on these things, you know, in a vacuum, or maybe sharing it with a handful of people along the way, just to get that kind of positive enthusiasm and support from a team of artists—it's hard to overstate just how helpful that is in and of itself. And because everyone loves the piece, all sorts of little moments show up. It can be small words, it can be tiny words, but it's kind of like tightening all the screws—’Hey, do we need to add a moment here? Do we need to trim this moment there?’ All of these things can happen because the talent and the intelligence is so high in the room. This is probably a process that could take months, but because of the caliber of people that TheatreSquared put in the room, it's expediting all of that in a really helpful way.

And how are you feeling about putting it in front of an audience on Sunday?

I can't wait. That's always been my hope. The intention is to share the story. I think folks up here will like it. I hope that it is a meaningful story for them and that it's entertaining and they enjoy it and I'm delighted to finally get to share it.

Let's talk about the play itself. Can you tell me a little bit about the little kernel of an idea that this play started out as?

I had this passing idea of, ‘What if the first responders didn't arrive first?’ And that was literally the germ. And I just said, Well, that's funny. And then I forgot about it. Months passed, and it was one of those days—I think I'd had a hard day, and, like I said, I'd been coming out of a battle with depression. These two paramedics arrived at this scene of what appeared to be a suicide. And out it came—it just started to pop, it just started to roll. I think it was probably something that had been in me for a long time. The story evolved and came to include a reporter who never really got her due and a veteran of the Afghanistan war, who had a hard time finding work when he got back. It just became this great cast of characters. And it's funny, it's a dark comedy, in many ways. It owes a lot. probably, to Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and some of the work of, I'd say, Martin Faranan McDonagh and Sam Shepard and that group, but it's also got this tremendous heart. It's set in rural Oklahoma, and the speaking rhythms are familiar and funny. And there's a lot of great southwestern repartee and wit and references to movies like ‘Tombstone’ and things like that. It has a deeper message that I think is hard to talk about without revealing too much of the story. But I think it's a piece that, if we do it right, can offer real catharsis for many people, not just in this country, but all over the world. And that's special. Certainly not every play that I write, can say that. We're having a lot of fun getting it in shape for folks.

There aren't that many play development programs in the United States to begin with, and some of the biggest names have closed over the last year or two. As a playwright, why do you think these play development programs and organizations and workshops are important?

It's only a story that can do good in the world if it's brought to life, and shared with fellow artists, and an audience. And it's wonderful and a great personal experience for me to create it, and to share it with family and friends—that is its own gift. But what TheatreSquared is offering, is this sort of island, when many other islands have been washed away—it's an incredible opportunity. Theater, in particular, is a really special art form, I think, because it's inherently collaborative. I can literally only take the story so far. It's meant to be on its feet. It's meant to be heard and to reverberate and be felt and to see sweat on the brow and to gather together in a room. I mean, how do you quantify the possible impact that can come from that gathering? And we lost it for a couple of years. The fact that TheatreSquared has come out even stronger is amazing. And I hope that the community continues to support it, because, as you said, it's even more rare these days. I really, truly am so thankful to be a part of it, especially in my home state. When I went off to New York, I didn't even really think I could be a writer. I wrote in my journal what success mean to me and I remember writing, ‘If I could bring back some great art to this state that gave me so much than that would really feel like success, and like a dream come true.’ I I didn't see much theater when I was growing up. I played sports and did schoolwork, and I didn't know what my future held. But to come back to Arkansas and share something that I think Arkansans will connect with in this development workshop is just so special, and I'm really appreciative.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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Arkansas native Joseph Scott Ford brings his art back home to the ANPF