Jeff Ward of Conway is comfortable in his sweatshirt and jeans at home, but he is willing to cinch himself into a corset or slip into a Santa suit to go onstage.
The 45-year-old has been acting since he was a student at Morrilton High School. Now he’s president of the Community Arts Association of Conway Board of Directors.
“I got involved in theater when I was 16. I’ve always kind of been interested in acting, and I was always kind of a class clown — not that you have to be a class clown to be in acting,” he said.
A friend of Ward’s in high school was performing in Little Shop of Horrors, and Ward did “a quick impression of Steve Martin’s character in that show — a sadistic dentist.”
The friend was impressed and suggested that Ward try theater. Almost 30 years later, Ward’s still at it.
After majoring in theater at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, he took a couple of years off before he and his wife, Kristina, moved in 1999 to Chicago, where he worked as a professional actor for 12 years.
Ward said he went there because he had a friend taking courses at The Second City, a comedy club, theater and school.
He said his wife is an English major, “a regular noncrazy person, following a crazy person who had an itch he had to scratch.”
“I worked pretty much nonstop,” Ward said, but he found out he didn’t care for improvisation.
He sang over the phone for the music director and then auditioned in person for the director at The Second City to land a role “as the creature” in a musical being written about Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.
He later performed in it for Theater Building in Chicago, a group that did all new plays and mostly original works.
“I don’t know if my entire time in Chicago I did anything anybody’s ever heard of,” he said.
“I got a chance to do a couple of things while I was there, including a play written by Dennis DeYoung, the old front man of Styx. He was there nightly for the show; he’s a nice guy.” It was the musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ward also had a role in Davy Crockett Truths, Half-Truths and Barefaced Lies, and toured, performing for school groups in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and other states.
“I had a good time. I was doing a lot of auditioning, day work in some movies,” he said. Ward was an extra in The Weather Man with Nicholas Cage, for one.
The couple had their first daughter, Madolyn, 15, while living in Chicago and moved to the suburbs for a better environment, he said. Charlotte, 9, was born while they lived in the suburbs.
The pull of family brought them back to Conway in July 2011.
Ward said Arkansas is not known for its plethora of acting opportunities. His day job is for CGI LLC in Little Rock, an events-management company.
“It’s a really good place to live; the kids love it here,” he said. “Arkansas has been really good to us.”
He got involved with the theater community quickly.
He first joined the Community Arts Association of Conway, doing business as The Lantern Theatre. He became a member of the board about six years ago.
One of his favorite roles he’s had was as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, performed in summer 2017.
”The Importance of Being Earnest was probably the most fun I’ve had in years,” Ward said. “Did I enjoy putting on a corset … basically getting dressed up in drag every night? No, but I felt like the product was so good.”
He was also named Best Supporting Actor for the role, voted on by theater patrons.
The play was directed by a Harding University teacher, Charles Bane.
“He and I go way back. He pretty much let me do whatever I wanted.”
Even though Ward isn’t keen on improv, he enjoys going off-script.
During that show, “people kept getting up and going to the bathroom over and over,” Ward said. When one woman came back from yet another trip to the bathroom, Ward, as Lady
Bracknell, looked at her and said, “You just missed the whole big reveal. Algernon and Jack are brothers,” he said, adding that the audience loved him breaking the fourth wall.
Then he looked at the other actor, Shua Miller, who played Jack/Earnest, and said, “Continue.”
“A character allows me to have fun like that. … The people who work with me know, ‘Jeff tries to crack people up,’” Ward said.
Miller, a former president of the arts association, agreed.
“That’s what rehearsals are for, so you can get used to that,” he said of Ward’s propensity to make actors laugh.
“I try to be prepared for anything,” Miller said.
He said it is “great working with Jeff, and it’s also intimidating working with Jeff” because of Ward’s talent level.
“The intimidating part is you … should be concentrating the whole time; you can’t rest, … but you really have to be concentrating when Jeff is around because there’s no telling what he’s going to do,” Miller said. “He’s never going to do something out of character or something he shouldn’t do.
“Jeff can play any role; he can do anything. He’s got such a wide emotional range and such great natural instincts. He is the best actor in central Arkansas.”
The two performed in The Odd Couple, in which Miller was Oscar, and Ward had a smaller role of the police officer, Murray.
Ward said he enjoyed working again with Miller and good friend Shane
Atkinson of Morrilton in Moonlight and Magnolias. It’s a story about a producer, writer and director, where the producer decided to lock everybody in a room and feed them only bananas and peanuts until they come up with an ending to Gone With the Wind.
“We’re playing three real people,” he said.
Ward portrayed Victor Fleming, a producer and director, who directed Gone With the Wind.
Miller and Shane Atkinson of Morrilton, another good friend of Ward’s, was in the play.
“I really love when I get the opportunity to play directly across from my friends,” Ward said.
“The Lantern Theatre — we’re not a company or a troupe; we don’t cast the same people for every show. When it works out that my friends and I get to work closely together, it’s just a lot of fun.
“If [the actors are] new, I have this tradition. I tell them, ‘Now you’re in our family. … You can’t get out.’”
They are a family without a home, though.
The Lantern Theatre had rented a building in downtown Conway since 2012, but the group decided to leave after mechanical problems in the building and street construction made it difficult to produce shows there.
“We cranked out four shows last year without a space; we’re looking at another five this year,” he said.
The 2019 season includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which will be performed April 5-6 and April 13-14 in Simon Park in downtown Conway; The Glass Menagerie; the female version of The Odd Couple; and The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife.
Ward spreads his acting talent around; he was in The Music Man with the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre at the University of Central Arkansas and also performs with the Red Curtain Theatre in Conway. He was Santa Claus in the musical Miracle on 34th Street.
The Red Curtain Theatre will present Encore in the Alley at 6 p.m. April 6 at 913 W. Oak St. Ward will sing, “Stars,” performing as the police inspector Javert, who vows to find the fugitive Jean Valjean in Les Miserables.
Ward, who has won People’s Choice Awards and other honors through the arts association, also enjoys directing.
“My directing career here is pretty short,” he said. It includes four shows: “Pvt. Wars, which had a cast of three; then it went to The Normal Heart, a cast of about eight; You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, with a cast of six; and the Les Mis school edition with the Red Curtain Theatre, with a cast of 65.”
Ward said one of of his prouder accomplishments is that God of
Carnage, performed a few years ago, won the state and regional competitions and advanced to the national competition in the American Association of Community Theatre festival.
“We were the first and only Arkansas theater, to this day, to make it to national,” Ward said.
He played Michael, a role originated by the late James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano in The Sopranos on HBO.
As president of the community-arts board, Ward has several goals.
“First of all, I think one of our goals is we want to be more education-focused,” he said. That might mean acting workshops and other outreach activities.
“We don’t do your run-of-the-mill community shows,” Ward said. “We’ve done several Pulitzer Prize-winning shows and things that make people uncomfortable, including topics of homosexuality and diversity.
“Our goal is just to keep doing fun stuff that people want to come and see and take their minds off things for a while, like Steel Magnolias, which is also poignant.”
That play, as well as The Odd Couple, “when they first came out, made a statement about something. We want to continue stretching the envelope more and do some fun stuff and shine some lights in some dark corners on things that need to be talked about,” Ward said.
The group will again look for a home of its own, but the show will go on.
“We’re just asking people to show up, come out and see some entertainment,” he said.
Chances are, it will include Ward in character.
On this day, he is in his favorite role of dad, picking up his daughters from school.
But tomorrow, he could be someone else entirely.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.