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[0:00] Candrice Jones: Like I said, I come off the heels of some very strong Black, well-intentioned women who have stood up for themselves and therefore have stood up for me.

[0:15] Gennean Scott: Welcome to The Black Business of Broadway, a podcast brought to you by the Broadway League and Black to Broadway. Here we highlight the stories, how-tos, and successes of the Black professionals and legends of Broadway.

[0:29] Gennean Scott: I'm your host, Gennean Scott. Today's guest is Candrice Jones, a playwright, poet, and educator. She has also been a fellow at Brown University and in London, a Vana playwright alum, and a Cal Arts Critical Studies MFA recipient. Her primary goal is to write love letters for and to women of the American South. She is the author of two full-length plays, Crack Baby and Flex. Flex is currently running at the Lincoln Center Theater. Welcome, Candrice.

[1:13] Candrice Jones: Thank you.

[1:24] Gennean Scott: And it sparked so many conversations. I brought my stepdaughter with me, who is also a basketball player.

[1:31] Candrice Jones: Wow.

[1:34] Gennean Scott: Lots of conversations. I'll just say that.

[1:37] Candrice Jones: True.

[1:37] Gennean Scott: So you're from Arkansas. What was that like growing up in Arkansas? And what led you to where you're at right now, where you're like, I am going to write work specifically for women of the American South? What about that upbringing led you to land there?

[1:56] Candrice Jones: Wow. So, like you said, I'm from Arkansas, born and raised. And pretty much to sum it all up, that is the life that I really know. Like the old saying, write what you know. And it's not that I just want to stick to that, but more than anything, these are the people that inspire my writing. They are the wellspring of inspiration, you know, that be my creativity. And I think as far back as I can remember, I have just enjoyed listening to stories from people who were from my hometown, around my hometown, Dermar, Arkansas. And the livelihood of people there always intrigued me. So when I really started thinking about what I wanted to focus on in my writing, I just kept looking back to home. I know the specific moment when I decided, okay, I am going to write love letters to women of the American South.

I was on Facebook, and this poet, I would say she wrote a writing prompt. I would call it a writing prompt. Or she asked a question, a general question. Her question was, where are the stories about people from the South, the American South, Black people in particular, who stayed and never left? And I was like, oh my God, you know, those are me and my people, you know, because, you know, like I said, even though I've spent some time outside of Arkansas, out of my 42 years of living, 38 of them have been, you know, in the state of Arkansas. So I just felt seen, I felt heard, and I felt a call to action. Because she specifically questioned or stated there are so many stories about people who left and went somewhere else.

There are so many stories about people who, you know, went somewhere outside the South and then came back. But where are the stories of the people who just stayed? And all I could think of was my immediate family. So that is where that comes from.

[4:38] Gennean Scott: That's awesome. Because so I'm originally from Nebraska, and I think about that same thing. We just had like our native day, so people came back, people who left who came back, and then there are people who've been there their entire life. And I shared with you that one of my other passions is women in sports, and it's because, like to basically to what your play said, a lot of times for Black folks in general, sports seems to be the ticket out, you know, or the gateway for people to get out of situations. It's the thing that even though we know the stats may not necessarily be in our favor as far as making it professionally, it is the gateway for many of us to get into college and create generational wealth, you know, a higher education, because most of our parents are like, look, you know, we didn't have the discretionary income to put away for a college fund, right?

[5:43] Candrice Jones: Right.

[5:44] Gennean Scott: So you're gonna have to get a scholarship, whether it be academic or athletic, you got to get some sort of scholarship. In your play, you tell the story of a high school girls' basketball team called the Lady Train, which takes place in your home of Arkansas, rural Arkansas, and basketball serves as a sanctuary for these young women to escape the pressures of growing up in a small town. Did basketball, was basketball also your escape, or is that just something that you just saw going around you?

[6:20] Candrice Jones: Well, I feel like I was very much so raised in what I call a basketball ecosystem. So I could definitely say that, you know, the conversation around basketball being a ticket out was definitely part, a huge part of the conversation of progression out of my hometown. And I will say that since I graduated from high school in 1999, I think the population, which was only about 4,000 then, has shrunk to about 2,000 or less. Yeah. And so, but basketball, sports, football is for boys, basketball for boys and girls, track, whatever, was definitely seen as an outlet. I don't think that the conversation was athletics over academics, like, you know, is touted by some, but it was definitely a question of finding exactly where your talent or skill was and then getting out using that talent or skill. I was one of those kids who saw, oh, either basketball or academics, you know. But I know for a few of the women on my team that it was seen as the golden ticket.

[7:46] Gennean Scott: Right. Now thinking about going back to the play Flex, looking at the different stories that the women were facing and the religion and making an abstinence pact, rather, not a pregnancy pact, but making an abstinence pact so that everyone would graduate and they could make it to the finals or to the championship. But the bigger thing was making it so that you could be seen in such a large arena so that you could be scouted and picked up and you'd be able to, you know, go to college and matriculate and, you know, be able to do something, do something more grand, I guess you'd say. Were these stories based on people and things that you saw growing up, or were these things that you just took creative license with mentally?

[8:43] Candrice Jones: I will say that, you know, now that I have written the play, and it is what it is, I think I tried to stray away from it, but each of the characters does remind me of someone. Each of the characters does remind me of someone or remind me of a thing that happened. I started writing the play in 2016 and started really thinking about, okay, what were some of the things that my teammates and I had to push back against. And so I do feel like many of the narratives simply come from the obstacles that we as a team faced. For example, you say we wanted to be seen. And we really did. We really did. It wasn't so much that we wanted to be seen so that we could, you know, get scouted. We knew that would happen, but we just wanted people to know that we existed, you know, outside of Southeast Arkansas, that we existed and we were capable of making it to the state arena.

We wanted those bragging rights, we wanted people in our hometown to know that we could stick together for a whole season and make it to the state tournament and be successful. You know, we wanted to be seen not only by individuals outside of our hometown, we wanted those people in our hometown who kind of challenged whether or not our team could go to the state tournament without anyone getting pregnant, without, you know, falling into the traps that a lot of young women in Southeast Arkansas, you know, fall into. We really wanted to prove that we could make it happen. And so, you know, the pact, no drinking, no smoking, no sex, I do recall us saying as a team this is what we're, this is our goal this year, this is how we're going to stick together, and you can see the larger things of the play manifesting through those promises that we made as young girls to each other.

It does cover those things of poverty, sexuality, freedom of choice, and it's very timely with what's going on right now when we talk about poverty, sexuality, freedom of choice that that is very present right now. And it's 2023, and you went through this in, you know, 1999, I went through this in 1994, and I would venture to guess that, you know, our parents and our parents' parents went through this as well. This is a tale as old as time, unfortunately, especially when it comes to our community. And how sometimes, you even talk about Christianity and how sometimes, being from the South, my family being from the South, being very much Texans, how sometimes Christianity will prevent us from knowing it. It's simply like interpretations of Christianity. I feel like, you know, puts a halt on how certain information is getting. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say.

[12:17] Candrice Jones: Um, and in those conversations, I can remember there was one mom who had two daughters on the team who were my age, and she was very just verbal. She was very like, listen, if you can't talk, she wouldn't necessarily say if you can't talk to your mom, talk to me. She would literally talk to the other moms or talk to us in front of our parents about things that I know that, quite honestly, my parents may not have been willing to approach in such a brass, you know, in such an abrasive manner. But you know, she was the young mother who had been through some things, and she simply wanted to see not only her children, you know, not repeat the same pitfalls that she felt she had made. She wanted to be clear that she didn't want anyone to fall into those same traps that she had fallen into. So she gave us real talk.

[13:29] But the thing about it was, you know, it was individuals getting to know themselves, individuals being introduced to ideas of having sex and sexuality. It was me with such abrasiveness, you know, it was no in between, either you do or you don't, and it's either it's wrong or it's right. There was no understanding of you are 15, 16 years old, and most of your teammates have been pregnant or, you know, and had to like the reality was that if there were 15 of us, 12 of us had given birth, you know. That was the reality of our situation. So, you know, for the idea of abstinence to be constantly taught to young women who were actively procreating, like not just actively having sex and actively giving birth and, you know, becoming mothers, and you know, the conversation was so nowhere near what it needed to be. Right. And I just couldn't understand. I really couldn't understand why it was that way, because obviously it wasn't working. Obviously, it wasn't working. Not for people in my hometown anyway.

[14:56] But again, that is, you know, what I'll say is the interpretation of Christianity. Um, and also just the denial of even though these young women may identify as Christians because many of them did and still do, and they love God, well, some of them might also love another female in a romantic way. Exactly. You know, that's okay. And what I found, especially with my former teammates who eventually came out, was that you know, these are some of the most, you know, God-fearing religious women I know. So somehow at a very young age, they were able to circumvent the idea that God does not love them, or you know, God does not love them because they are homosexuals, which is why to me the character Donna is so important.

[16:05] Yes. You know, we have Sharice who does struggle with her relationship, hers and Donna's relationship and her Christian values. But I think Donna is very much in a place, you know, that she could say, I love God and I love Sharice too. You know, um, and so it was important for me to show that in the narrative that, you know, Christianity is not necessarily the villain, it's how individuals interpret it. Yes. And so, yeah, it's and again, that is something that we're still dealing with today. Especially in our community, especially in our community. Yeah. More I would say more so in our community than anywhere else, unfortunately.

[16:55] But I love that, like I said, and I think this was before we were recording, there were so many layers. It was just like, oh my gosh. And it just and the back stories of these young ladies and the coach included, and I love the aspect of the mental health that got explored. I was just like, oh my gosh, she's covered all this in this finite period of time. And I mean, I encourage anybody, regardless of your race or ethnicity, to, you know, to go out and see this play because especially with a young person, because it is a conversation starter, if nothing else. It is a conversation starter into what our young people are facing, you know, on a day to day.

[17:44] So in "Flex," you know, we talked about you explore the differences of, you know, that women face in the sports industry and you question, you know, that are often asked of women but not of men. You know, why is it important that we tell these types of stories? I mean, it's so important that we tell these types of stories, um, mainly so we can, and it's really simple. So number one, so we can be informed. There are parts of human geography, especially in the southern parts of the United States, that people are not necessarily aware of, and the interactions between people there in those communities are a bit different than interactions in, you know, the mainly white spaces. A lot of my impulse to tell stories about individuals, you know, from my own hometown as well as, you know, me and everyone that I grew up around and raised me is I don't feel like there's necessarily misinformation.

I just feel like that the visibility is not there. You know, the push again, like when I was a high school girl playing basketball, we just wanted other people to know that we existed. It's still that impulse, the idea of our town actually being on the map, but as far as basketball is concerned and gender equality, you know, and I don't think anyone doubts this.

[19:36] That the love and the passion that women who play sports, it exists, it's there. And it is there as strongly with women as it is, you know, with men. It's about instilling, you know, that perspective in children that, you know, these qualities are not just attached to masculinity or femininity. You know, these qualities are attached to whoever had the ball in their hand the longest, quite to be quite honest, you know, and so and that those types of perspectives can instill a certain amount of pride, a certain type of pride in children, and hopefully, you know, those children will then grow up to say, you know, if they do happen to be in a position where they are wondering about, you know, can it take, you know, a certain type of person to do a certain job? Maybe that, you know, life experience that they had coming up will tell them, okay, my mom played basketball, therefore it's not necessarily just attached to masculinity.

[20:54] So you've taken all these experiences that you've had growing up, um, and playing basketball and the interactions that you've had, and you created this work. How did you get it to Lincoln Center?

[21:10] Candrice Jones: Um, a lot of workshops and a lot of people who supported the play. I've had the opportunity to workshop this play with Black women, period. I am lucky enough to have come into theater and playwriting at an older age, but I'm coming on the heels of Black women who have been very vocal and very strong in how the workshop process needs to be a safe space for Black women. I don't think that that scene where mental health is brought up in the play, I don't think that scene would have happened if there had been anything other than Black women in the room.

[22:08] Candrice Jones: Wow. Because somebody would have pushed back against it, but luckily I was at ground floor, which is headed by Madeline Oldham. But Madeline, you know, her thing was this is clearly a Black play, which when I started writing the play, I decided this was going to be a Black play about Black women that in no way was being leery of the white gaze.

[22:40] Gennean Scott: Right, right.

[22:41] Candrice Jones: You know, and luckily when others read the play who accepted it into their workshops, they felt that impulse because it's not like I told them only a Black director and only a Black dramaturg. I did say only Black actors.

[23:00] Gennean Scott: Right.

[23:01] Candrice Jones: You know, but you know, luckily I had the benefit of people who understood that, you know. So when it was workshopped at, you know, at ground floor at the Berkeley Rep, Margot Hall was the director and Kim Yule was there as my dramaturg. And you know, both of those women have had, you know, a whole history in theater, and they are both very strong voices. And so, like I said, in the scene that does take place at a public counseling office, when I wrote that in that workshop, nobody questioned it. You know, nobody questioned why doesn't this take place in a at an abortion clinic? Because everyone in that room, I felt like did not see the character April as a statement, they saw her as a human.

[24:03] Gennean Scott: Yes, yeah, who needed help.

[24:05] Candrice Jones: Right. You know, and then Bay Area Playwrights, again, a room full of Black women, you know, and then at Lincoln Center and the script, the script went from Bona to ground floor to Bay Area Playwrights. It got accepted to Humana in the year of 2020. Everything shut down. But again, that was a room full of Black women. And then after that, after the pandemic happened and everything went to a halt, and the play did not get world premiered. Um, it has gotten two productions, two regional theater productions. One here in Arkansas Theater Square, which is a beautiful theater with, you know, it was a beautiful experience.

[25:00] Gennean Scott: Right.

[25:01] Candrice Jones: And then it was done in Atlanta at Theatrical Outfit. And somehow the script got into the hands of Jenna Clark Embry at Lincoln Center. And I'm pretty sure it was through my agent. But um, it's um, yeah, she read it and advocated for it. But again, um it was a room full of Black women. Um, Kim Yule, my dramaturg for the play, she was present. Um, Liliana Blaine Cruz, of course, directed, um, Black cast, you know, and it was this play to me, these characters have been so well taken care of by Black women who care about these characters, who see themselves in these characters, and you know, want their journeys to be, you know, full and you know, want to see themselves in the play and therefore want the play to be seen.

[26:08] Gennean Scott: So, yeah, yeah. And you know what? How rare is it that you have so many Black women touching work that's coming on this type of stage?

[26:22] Candrice Jones: So kudos to you, and kudos to you for sticking to what you know to be true. Like I said, I come off the heels of some very strong Black, well-intentioned women who have stood up for themselves and therefore have stood up for me.

[26:41] Gennean Scott: That's awesome. And so you're working on, you have another project coming up, right?

[26:46] Candrice Jones: Oh, a Medusa Thread. That’s one play that I hope gets produced. Um, it's a play that takes place in a purgatorial beauty shop run by the Gorgon Medusa. And um, it's about transitioning. It's about like individuals who are transitioning who have dealt with um sexual trauma, transitioning from purgatory into whatever afterlife they choose. And um, the reason why I chose to place the play in a Black beauty shop is quite simply because that is in my personal experience. A Black beauty shop was the first place that I felt a real sense of agency about myself.

[27:48] Gennean Scott: Um, I felt a real sense of, you know, this is how I want to be treated, and if I don't like how I'm being treated, then I can voice my opinion on that.

[28:04] Candrice Jones: Um, I understand that is not everyone's experience, sadly, when they go into beauty shops, but I wanted to create an environment in which someone who had experienced, for individuals who had, you know, past life experiences and were still dealing with them even as they transitioned over into afterlife. I wanted, you know, to create an environment in which the beauticians, the hairstylists, the people who touch their heads are only concerned with their care. And so um, that's the type of beauty shop that exists in a Medusa Thread.

[28:51] Gennean Scott: I love it.

[28:52] Candrice Jones: A project that I do have ongoing that I'm actually, I'm going to Minneapolis next week and I'm workshopping it, is um Love Them First, which is a musical. Okay, based on a um principal at an elementary school in Minneapolis. Her name is Mauri Friesleighman, and she was, she's no longer there, but she was the principal of Lucy Kraft Laney Elementary in North Minneapolis. There was a documentary um done based on the principal in the school. And she's the principal, she's just a very inspirational character. But um, the documentarians, they not only go into the school and focus on her, they focus on the kids and the teachers. And it's just, you know, if you were to watch the documentary, which is on YouTube, it's very heartwarming and heartbreaking as well. You know, but it uh, it's not one of those um, it's not poverty porn.

[29:58] Gennean Scott: Right.

[29:58] Candrice Jones: They all have stories of strength and resilience. Um, they're going through the phases of standardized testing, which is something that mostly everyone can relate to. And so um, the challenge is how do um I and the composer Randy Preston, how do we capture all this and put it into the form of a musical?

[30:25] Gennean Scott: I think you're on the cutting edge yet again. So that's it's awesome. And we will definitely uh look for that work. One, it has been amazing uh talking to you and hearing your story and hearing your journey uh to where you are now. So one thing that we always ask our guests, it's uh it's a piece of advice to to future leaders. So, what one piece of advice would you like to share with the future Black leaders of Broadway?

[30:58] Candrice Jones: So the future you.

[31:01] Candrice Jones: Oh wow, that's that's a hard one. But I guess one thing that I would love to do is what others have done for me, is just to help clear the road. You know, um several times in this interview, I brought up the fact that there are Black women who have come before me who, you know, have done the work that has enabled me to feel safe doing my work.

[31:39] Gennean Scott: Right.

[31:39] Candrice Jones: And I know when I'm in an environment that's not safe. Um as an artist. So for me to have experience, I would say 90% of my career so far has been in safe spaces.

[32:00] Gennean Scott: Right.

[32:00] Candrice Jones: You know, that's amazing. But it's because other women have come before me and paved the way and said that our stories need to be told. So that, that's more than anything, you know. I challenge myself and, you know, other future leaders to simply help to pave the way. Always revere the ancestors, but also, you know, know that they have done things to pave the way and try to do the same.

[32:37] Gennean Scott: I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much.

[32:42] Candrice Jones: I want to thank our guests and you, our listeners. You could have been doing anything else, but you chose to spend your time with me, and I am grateful. Be sure to subscribe at BPN.fm slash bv. So you'll never miss an episode. While you're at it, tell a friend. I'm your host, Gennean Scott, and we at the Broadway League hope you enjoyed this episode of the Black Business of Broadway.