Interview: Sara Jean Ford of Theatre Raleigh's COME FROM AWAY

From April 1st-19th, Theatre Raleigh will be presenting the Tony-winning musical COME FROM AWAY at the De Ann S. Jones Theatre. Sara Jean Ford and I previously spoke in 2023 talking about North Carolina Theatre’s production of MARY POPPINS. I recently spoke with her again as she's now taking on the Beverly/Annette track. She has appeared on Broadway in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, FINIAN’S RAINBOW, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, and CATS.

To start things off, how are rehearsals going?

SJF: Oh, they’re so fun! I'm having a great time. The cast is wonderful. We're led by such an amazing crew. The theater itself is just a dream to work at. I'm having a great time.

You’ve previously performed here in the Triangle area a few times. What do you enjoy most about coming back?

SJF: Well, it sort of feels like home now at this point. I always joke that, “Raleigh is the only place that lets me belt,” which is a silly term, but it basically means that it's a very different part of my voice. Usually I'm singing up in the stratosphere high notes, and then I come to Raleigh and I get to like really sit into like a lower part of my voice. But what's my favorite part about coming back? The people. I have friends here. They feel like family at this point.

This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the events of Come From Away. How do you recall September 11th, 2001?

SJF: Oh, wow! Well, our director, Tim Seib, led us in a talk about this on one of the first days of rehearsal. So we've all been sort of like talking about it and it's been at the forefront of all of our brains during this process. I was a freshman in college. I had just started at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I was across the country for the first time in my life. I am originally from California. So that was kind of weird to be so far away. I was in class, somebody ran in and said that somebody had hit the World Trade Center. Then we were evacuated from school because Carnegie Mellon runs a large deal of the computers from the Pentagon. So we were worried that we were at target, you know, everybody was worried they were at target at that point. Everyone was scared, so we were off from school for a couple days. It was a really bizarre time and I couldn't get a hold of my family because cell phones were down. It was a fascinating time.

What has it been like for you getting to dive into this musical?

SJF: I saw this musical in Toronto when it was there right before its Broadway run. I was there doing a show and I remember being so moved. It's so interesting. You don't really come out humming songs because all of the songs are sort of like motifs and then you like to sit with them for a second and then you move on to the next motif, and then you sit and then you move on to the next. So it's like it, I saw it and, but it wasn't on my radar as like a show that I was gonna do ever. So getting into the show, getting this offer, I was like, “oh yeah, that show. Like, yeah, sure, let me take a look.” So it's all very new to me. It's like one of the hardest things I've ever done. It moves constantly. I don't wanna say it's nonlinear because it is linear in time. You're moving forward day by day or hour by hour in these five days that these 7,000 passengers were stuck in Gander, Newfoundland. But the way that it's written is just very different from anything I've ever done. There's no, like, you get up and somebody says a line and then you're like, “oh, I obviously respond with this line.” It's like you get up, you have a monologue for about like a moment, and then you move forward into the next moment. It's a lot of choral singing with really strong, tight harmonies. It's a really beautiful ensemble piece, which is what it should be because it's kind of what the whole show is about, is about how we're all in this together and we're not alone.

How do you navigate playing multiple roles?

SJF: Good question. I'm figuring that out literally right now. You would just really have to make very specific choices informed by the character and make it all about specificity and just like being very specific. It helps that I'm working with two different dialects. Some people are working with more. I am lucky that I only have to do the Newfoundland dialect and then sort of like a North Floridian dialect. That helps sort of ground each person. With Captain Beverly Bass, she is the first female American Airlines pilot in the world. She never took no for an answer. She just went out and did what she wanted. She's got a really strong backbone. She's really strong. I don't think she takes anything from anyone. Then my other character that I focus on, I have a couple more, but Annette is a local to Newfoundland. She's a teacher. She kind of has this wild romantic side. They kind of both represent both sides of my personality. One is like, sort of like quirky and funny and weird. Then the other one is like a strong, bad lady. That's basically me. That's, that's who I am. 

As Captain Beverly Bass, you get the big solo number, ‘Me and the Sky,’ which Jenn Colella helped make famous in the original Broadway cast. What’s it like getting to learn it?

SJF: Oh, it's great. You mentioned Jenn Colella, who's a friend of mine. I got to see her in the Toronto production. Her and I are very different, but we can do the same things. So it's been fun to sort of watch her and listen to her and be like, “okay, this, that's Jenn's version for sure.” Then sort of tackle it from my own perspective. The vocal part of it is really just so fun and it fits really smoothly into my voice. It's a bit of a challenge, but like, not too much. So that part is very fun to get to like just wailing vocally. There's a lot of words in that song and it just kind of keeps going. There's no time to swallow or breathe. So I have to technically really map out those moments when I can. That song is actually very linear and that she's like really telling the story of how, like it's her entire history of conception of I want to be a pilot to now. I'm flying and I am the first American Airlines female pilot, and now I'm leading the first all female crew. Then I'm in the air and I hear from air traffic that there's been a terrorist action. So it really just tells this whole story. It's great to get to enjoy that. Again, a song that was not on my radar, I did not know it. So I really just had to go in and find it for myself and sing it a lot. I basically sing it a whole lot by my poor neighbors, to whoever they may be, “God bless you because you just listened to me scream in my apartment.”

When we last spoke, you mentioned how like the first big credit on your resume was the Chicago production Wicked. How do you look back at that?

SJF: Oh gosh! I was so young. I was right out of college. It's funny 'cause everyone in the cast kept saying, "Oh, you're so green.” That was their way of saying that I was so young and I didn't know anything. Now I look back and I was like, “oh my God, I was so green.” I didn't know anything about what that was like. Being on stage was so much fun in that show. It was so big, you know, there it was, it was so beautiful. The lighting design and the set design and the costume design, like every bit of it, was just magic. We were the third company of Wicked ever. So we were very much in its beginning stages of fandom and we were in the rehearsal room with the full creative team and producing team. It was brand new really at that point. So it was a very special thing to get to like, come into that show and kind of create a little bit. It wasn't so set in stone that I couldn't do something that was a little different from the original. That was very, very fun. That being said, I didn't stay in that show for too long. I left right when my contract was done. That was just because it just wasn't the right time for me to be sitting down on a show in Chicago. I wanted to be in New York, and so I did. I left that show and moved to New York.

Currently in previews on Broadway is a brand new reimagining of Cats. You got to be in the first revival about a decade ago. What was that like to be a part of?

SJF: Oh my God! It was like a drug trip. I had never seen or really listened to Cats. I sort of boycotted Cats as a child. I thought it was silly and dumb and not real musical theater. I was very opinionated about it. So when I actually got it, alongside my best friend, Tyler Hanes, we both sat down to watch the 1998 proshot. I think 15 minutes in, we paused it and he was like, he had this deer in headlights look. He said, “what did we do? What have we gotten ourselves into?” I said, “if I am not on the ground crawling around like a cat for at least a week in rehearsals, I'm quitting. I need to be just all in. I gotta drink the Kool-Aid here and just be a cat.” We crawled around on the ground. The original director, Trevor Nunn, came back and worked with us and we did full blown cat imagery and we became cats. So by then I was just like, “oh, this is so fun and so weird and so insane.” Then I was dancing my face off and singing my face off. That was the hardest thing I've ever done. Hard on my body, hard on my voice, hard on my brain, and hard on my soul. But it was also very rewarding to be in an ensemble like that and just the most incredible dancers on Broadway. I have seen the Cats: The Jellicle Ball Off-Broadway and I got to bring my daughter to it, who was 10 at the time. From the moment it started, it was like an encouragement, you stand up and you dance and you sing songs, you sing with them. They really want you to be a part of the party. She was so embarrassed by me and I was like, girl, like I just want you to know that like, this isn't gonna stop here. Like by the end of this, I'm gonna be on the chair, like hands in the air singing. Then she joined me by the end and she had a good time. I'm really excited for that cast to move to Broadway and make that Broadway money. They deserve it. They deserve the whole world.

Your previous credits in the Triangle area were 9 to 5 and Mary Poppins, both with North Carolina Theatre. Since then, they’ve closed up shop. How do you look back at your time with them?

SJF: Oh, so great! It was a fast process. You rehearse only for I think two weeks, and then you, and then you're up and running. This process here at Theatre Raleigh, we really have a lot more time. It almost feels like it's luxurious to have so much time to put a show together. Obviously, they bring in people from New York, they bring in people from everywhere for North Carolina Theatre and for Theatre Raleigh. But the local talent out here is just so good. That's always one of the fun parts about this is like meeting locals and, and respecting and being inspired by the local talent and being like, “oh, yeah, like the only difference between me and you is that I live in New York City, and that's it.” So I think that my time with North Carolina Theatre was just like being so inspired by our locals and it's like I live here.

Looking ahead into the future, what are some dream roles you would love to pursue?

SJF: Oh, it's so interesting when you're like, just starting out, you're, you're dreaming about the roles that you can play right then. A lot of roles are written for 20 somethings, you know, like 20 somethings in love. That's really kind of like a lot of theater and musical theater especially. Those are sort of the stories that are being told. As you get older, you start to realize “oh, like there's not a lot written for women in their thirties, forties, fifties.” It's like you're an ingénue and then you're an old crone, and there's like really nothing in between. Which is why I come from a very special and different in that way that there's like, there are older people on stage, and it is because it's a story about real people and it's not just about who's in love. Actually the love story on stage is between two older people, which is again, another true story, which is pretty cool. So as I get older, I start to realize like, “oh, I can play these, like roles that I knew that were never like, like I keep saying on my radar. Like, these were never roles that I really thought that anybody would let me play, but maybe they will, you know?” So like, I wanna play Madame Thénardier in Les Miz, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, and Margaret Johnson in The Light in the Piazza. These are some of the older roles that I wanna play. Unfortunately, I don't know if I'm old enough yet. So I'm still waiting and also I'm a writer. I learned very early on that I needed to write the roles. So I'm currently working on that.

I guess that segues into the next question. Before we go, do you have any other upcoming projects you’d like to share with us?

SJF: Not quite yet, because they're not really ready to be seen and heard and all the things. But you can check out my web series that I wrote and starred in called The Aging Ingénue. My writing partner and husband also directed it. We did it I don't know how many years ago, but it's on YouTube and it was on BroadwayWorld. Check it out, theagingingenue.com, or just Google it. A little six episode miniseries.

Sara, I thank you very much for devoting your time to this conversation. It was great getting to talk to you. For those who’d like to keep up with your career, where can people find you on the internet?

SJF: I have a website, sarajeanford.com. That's pretty easy. I have an Instagram account and that's @sweetford.

Be sure to catch Theatre Raleigh’s production of COME FROM AWAY running from April 1st-19th. For more information, please click here.