On April 6 and 7, Lexington will welcome Broadway ingénue Sara Jean Ford for a special masterclass and concert. Ford’s Broadway credits include Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera and Jellylorum in CATS. She has also toured nationally with Wicked.
Lexington High School senior Darren Huang caught up with Ford to learn more about her background, what motivates her, and what’s she’s working on now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Darren Huang: Just a little bit about myself: I’m a senior at Lexington High School. I play the flute in the LHS Wind Ensemble, and I also work with FOLMADS, Friends of Lexington Music, Art, and Drama Students, which is a parent-run, nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the arts.
So, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the things that you’ve done in the past?
Sara Jean Ford: My name is Sarah Jean Ford, and I am an actor, singer, teacher, writer, mom… everything! I live in New York City, and I’ve been doing this out here professionally for almost 20 years. I’m originally from Southern California and I’ve always wanted to be a performer. I had it in my blood — my grandparents were singers and I came from a family that was very supportive of the arts. I decided to study performance at the collegiate level, and I went to Carnegie Mellon University and its conservatory for acting. From there, I went on to New York City and started working professionally pretty much right away. I also started teaching about three or four years into my career as an actor.
DH: It’s amazing how your family was so supportive of your music experience as a whole. Why do you think having a family that supports this type of experience growing up is so important?
SF: Well, I started working professionally in a children’s chorus, doing things like backup vocals for TV and film recording artists. I also joined the chorus in high school, and luckily we were able to have a well funded music department at my public school in Newbury Park, California, which is not always the case these days anymore. I would put ensemble singing on par with playing team sports; you have to learn to work with one another, even with people who are not exactly like you or people who you might have conflicts with. It’s so important to find a blend and a balance with them, and learn to work with one another in a very intimate way. As a musician, you’re listening to other people because it’s not all about you.
In addition, I was doing plays. Again, I would liken it to team sports; Phantom of the Opera, for example, takes about 300 people just to put on the show for one night. That’s a lot of people to work together with. So in order to do this professionally, I learned from a very young age how important these ensemble and acting experiences are in learning to work together and making the world a better place.
DH: Yeah, I totally get what you mean. From my experience playing in wind ensembles and other groups, what you said just resonates with me so much. It’s so important that you learn that you’re just one part of a big whole. In a team, it really does take everyone moving towards the same goal in order to achieve that.
Besides what you said about working in these big shows and working together with a lot of people to produce them, what’s the most challenging aspect about your acting career and how would you say you tried to overcome it?
SF: I guess the most challenging aspect about being an actor is when I’m not acting. You know, once you have the job, you’re making money. You’re getting a steady paycheck. You have something to do every day. You have a routine, and everything kind of falls into place. It’s when I’m not being employed by someone else that the challenges really start to show themselves. The routine, the steady paycheck, all those things get taken away. So when the pandemic hit, it was interesting because we didn’t even have an opportunity to work and create art and other beautiful things that move me and move others.
Early on in college, I started to write a little. I was writing monologues and scenes, and it wasn’t until I was faced with some unemployment that I started to really crack down on my personal creative life and create my own work. It’s really empowering and it makes me better in the audition room when I can go in and know that I’m not waiting for somebody to say yes to me and accept me, you know, because I’ve already accepted myself and my own creative life.
DH: I remember during the pandemic, I had to find my own creative outlets as well, like editing together videos of myself playing the different parts in chamber music and making covers and things like that. It’s definitely a challenge when you’re simply just unable to connect with other human beings around you in that kind of creative capacity. So aside from challenges like these, which I think is a sentiment that many performing arts students share, what advise do you have for young people interested in the arts to make them feel a little more confident about their future?
SF: I don’t think there’s one right way to a performing arts career. I don’t necessarily believe that college is the be all and end all, especially nowadays when it costs so much money. Going in, I took out loans, and I’m still paying them off now! I don’t necessarily think that that’s the path for everyone. It was a great path for me and I’m so glad that I did it because I felt like it was a great chance to be away from my family, but still feel protected in the sense that I was able to feel safe enough to sort of explore who I was but in an educational setting. I think college is something that everyone has to really get deep with themselves on, and see if that’s what they want. And it’s so hard to know whether it’s something you want or not.
I would never sugarcoat it because this life is not an easy life. However, I keep pursuing it because I love it, not because I’m getting accolades and awards, because there are whole years — years and years that go by where I’m not on Broadway, and that isn’t everything there is to my career. This really is a journey where you just have to love what you do. And if you love it, you can point to that part of yourself that goes, this is the only thing that’s going to fill me, and it should help you decide whether or not you want to tread down this path.
DH: So I know you’ve started your own web series, The Aging Ingénue. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
SF: During the pandemic, my then boyfriend, now husband, and I were just brainstorming. He’s a filmmaker, and we were so bored that we came up with this idea. At the time, I was teaching these young girls all of these beautiful ingénue songs, which are songs sung by the young, innocent, naive, lover in musical theater or plays, mainly the roles that I played in my youth. I would listen to these girls sing these songs, and I would finish my lesson and just sing the entire song again by myself. I thought, “what if I just sat on a stool and sang some Ingenue songs and called it The Aging Ingenue?” My husband thought it was fantastic, and so we just kind of put our brains together and made a small web series called The Aging Ingénue. It’s about a woman named Claire Cook, who is facing that time in her life where she’s no longer being seen for roles of a certain age, where she is too young to play the old lady and too old to play the young lady.
DH: I know you’ll be in Lexington in April for a concert and a masterclass too, and it’s called the Evening with The Aging Ingénue.
SF: The concert that I’m doing in Lexington is based on The Aging Ingénue. It’s so much fun; we put it together here in New York City in September, and it went over so well. I’ve always done solo concert work ever since I started working, so it’s really something that I love doing.
Sara Jean Ford will perform at Lexington High School on Sat., April 6. Tickets are available here: https://www.showtix4u.com/event-details/82396