Candrice Jones was not exactly a hero growing up in her hometown of Dermott in the 1990s. After all, she "only" played women's basketball.
"That kind of adoration went to the boys," she says. "But we were well respected."
More importantly, for Jones and her friends "basketball was the way we really connected" and one of the things that awakened in her a love for Dermott and its people. It was also the hook for her play "FLEX," which will make its world premiere June 29 at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville. "I wanted to write about the joy and pain of living in a small town and poverty and teenage pregnancy. It seemed fresh soil for a play."
A Steinberg Playwright Award winner and a VONA Playwriting alumna, Jones has been a resident fellow at Ground Floor housed by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, and MacDowell's Colony of the Arts. Her play "Crackbaby" was nominated for the prestigious Wasserstein Prize in 2010, and she received a 2019-20 Many Voices Fellowship and a 2020-21 Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights' Center.
But back when she was a teenager in Dermott, says Jones, who is 41, everybody knew everybody else, the can of worms that is social media hadn't yet been opened, and "there was still a little bit of innocence left in the world."
"I remember falling in love with the idea of staying in my hometown forever, being a person who decided to enrich her hometown," she says. "I think that was part of the values that were taught then: No matter how far you go, always have a respect for where you came from. And I have always maintained a respect for Dermott, Ark. I think because I did play basketball there, the town gave me something very special."
Jones' brother, Johnny, who is 15 months older, says he's the one who taught her to play basketball -- "that really is true," he insists -- but both of them followed in the footsteps of older siblings, who often dragged them off to basketball practice because it was their turn to babysit.
"We were better" than those older siblings, he adds, "and Candrice was as good as I was."
Johnny Jones says the Dermott boys' team of the 1990s was a storied program that regularly won state titles. The girls' team was in rebuilding mode, he adds, but made it to the state tournament at least once during the four years Candrice was on the varsity squad. She was talented enough to start playing varsity a year early, in ninth grade instead of 10th.
"They had a good, solid team," he says. "They were always in the hunt."
But Jones' love for words grew right alongside her love for hoops.
"My first special writer moment came when I was in first grade, and my brother suggested he and I write Mother's Day poems," she remembers. "My family was really excited about mine, and I liked the praise, so I kept trying at it."
OUT OF DERMOTT
At the same time, it never really occurred to Jones that she could be a writer. Dermott -- named for a plantation owner, Dr. Charles McDermott, who also invented a cotton picking machine -- was a town of only a couple of thousand. Located about 70 miles southeast of Pine Bluff in Chicot County, it's known for its wide, tree-lined streets and the annual Crawfish Festival, which Jones remembers as the biggest event in southeast Arkansas in the 1990s and early 2000s.
"I don't think I seriously began thinking of writing as a career until I was a teenager," she says. "Even then, being from rural Arkansas, that possibility seemed so far fetched. It was a long time before I truly believed in myself.
"At one point, my mom got sick, and I took care of her," Jones remembers. "She had a stack of Terry McMillan books by her bed which she told me not to read, so guess what I did? It was the most rebellious I ever was. But reading McMillan was the first time I recall reading an author who sounded like she lived in my world.
"I was encouraged by everyone, but no one knew a clear path, so I did what a lot of writers do: I became an English teacher."
Jones' undergraduate degree -- English with a concentration in creative writing -- came from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, where yes, she did play basketball. But it was her trajectory as a poet that took her to the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita where her brother, Johnny, was already a student. "So I had a lot of support," she remembers. "Moving and adjusting was always relatively easy 'cause I knew what my purpose was in those moments."
Johnny Jones laughs and says the competition absolutely continued in college, only this time it was in the classroom.
"I suggested she go to Cal-Arts kind of as a dare and kind of because I knew she could succeed there," he says. And she did, earning a master of fine arts in critical studies.
Still, Arkansas called her home. And upon her return, she moved in with her sister in Little Rock and taught school at Wilbur D. Mills and then Little Rock Central high schools.
"I still love teaching," she says. "Teaching high school kids is never boring. It's interesting teaching now, because these kids are so aware of the world and societal politics. I imagine it may have been like this in the late '60s. But now is a special time to be around youth because their perspectives are so independent of the older generations."
Jones taught for 14 years until a combination of her experiences, her poetry and her commitment to write "love letters for and to women of the American South" brought her plays to national attention.
ON TO THEATRESQUARED
"FLEX" was days away from premiering at the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2020 when the pandemic shut performing arts down.
"Still not over that," Jones admits. "But I've worked on projects with Actors Theater of Louisville, who produced Humana, since. That has been reaffirming and healing."
Instead, Jones found herself workshopping the play at TheatreSquared's Arkansas New Play Festival in 2021 before being invited back for a full production this summer, a co-world premiere with Theatrical Outfit in Atlanta, where "FLEX" will be produced in the fall.
"We've never had so many people tell us on their way out of a workshop reading, 'you have to do this play,'" says TheatreSquared's director of new play development Dexter Singleton. "The audience loved it. The artists loved it. And now, all of Northwest Arkansas will have the chance to love it, too. The incredible humanity, compelling story, and sheer energy of 'FLEX' are simply not to be missed."
"I've been aware of Candrice's work for many years now," Singleton adds. "I read 'FLEX' for the first time a couple of years ago, and was familiar with a couple of her other works as well. So I knew the power of her work, and I knew she was brilliant."
"It's been a stroke of good fortune for us at [TheatreSquared] -- to have met this brilliant playwright right here in our backyard, telling this profound Arkansas story in a way that's never been seen before on the American stage," puts in Bob Ford, artistic director and founding member of the theater. "Candrice's work has already been celebrated around the country. So we're thrilled to be premiering 'FLEX' right here in her home state."
Jones can't say enough about her experience workshopping "FLEX" at TheatreSquared and about the company.
Jones was invited to the Arkansas New Play Festival by Ford and Singleton.
"New play development is absolutely important since it provides a multitude of opportunities for not only playwrights, but directors, actors, designers and producers. Each group of individuals I've listed gain professional maturity in the new play development process.
"Getting a new play into the world takes the work of a very large village, that ranges anywhere from the West to the Midwest to the East Coast. I don't think that there will ever be a period again in which one voice (say Shakespeare) dominates each and every corner of theater again.
"I love a lot of Shakespeare's works," Jones goes on. "So I don't think his or other dead playwrights' works are disposable. I do think that just as Shakespeare once existed and produced on a major scale, so have other playwrights in each generation since. However, if there are no theaters and programs that push new work, then those voices, the playwrights and all others I listed, will not get heard."
"This play, 'FLEX' -- I just love the fact that it's about young women from Arkansas, and the fact that a writer who has the ability to be and live anywhere in the world, ultimately, still makes her home in Arkansas, where she was born and raised and is writing stories and honoring Black women," Singleton says. "I just thought it was a no-brainer to be able to have this play premiere at TheatreSquared. I think it is really incredible that the play has the opportunity to premiere here near her home, where many, many Arkansas folks, Arkansas young women, Arkansas ballplayers, from small towns and big ones, can have an opportunity to experience this play."
The production, which runs alongside this year's Arkansas New Play Festival at TheatreSquared, is being directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, a founder and the former artistic director of MOXIE Theatre, which she led for 12 acclaimed seasons. Turner Sonnenberg has also directed plays for The Old Globe Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Cygnet Theatre, New Village Arts, Diversionary Theatre, and the Playwright's Project as well as staged readings for theaters around the country.
"We met when I was hired to direct a reading of 'FLEX' for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in San Francisco in 2019," remembers Turner Sonnenberg. "The first time I spoke with Candrice, she made me homesick. I love her voice, and her Southern dialect made me miss all of my family back in Atlanta. My first impression of her as a writer was (and still is) that hers is a voice that's going be important in the art of theater."
'FLEX'
Set in 1997, when the WNBA was just starting to garner attention, "FLEX" is the story of the Lady Train basketball team from Plainnole, Ark., and is in myriad ways based on the Dermott Lady Rams. Headed into the playoffs, the team has issues bigger than basketball -- "poverty, sexuality and freedom of choice are all major themes," Jones says. "Still, the relationships the Lady Train share is the ultimate catalyst that moves the narrative forward."
The play opens on a Thursday evening in early March when characters Starra Jones, a point guard; Sidney Brown, a shooting guard; Cherise Howard, a power forward; April Jenkins, a shooting guard; and Donna Cunningham, the center, are practicing on a dirt court with one basket. Music is blaring -- "a bouncy beat from a Black '90s girls' group expressing the brand of shiny candy-coated wet tomboy teen girl power common in those days," as Jones' stage directions specify. It's the "First Quarter" of the play. "They are a team, but they're also in competition," Jones says. Starra thinks Sidney, a newcomer to town, is stealing her thunder, and Jones admits she sees something of herself in Donna, who does "crowd control."
"I wasn't even mature enough to be a peace maker," she says of her own high school days. "I was more trying to turn things into a joke and use my goofiness to alleviate the drama.
"When I started writing 'FLEX,' I simply wanted to write about my high school basketball experience," she explains. "The more I dove into the stories, I found myself understanding my hometown and the issues that live in it more deeply. As a writer who lives in Arkansas, others often expect me to write about my experiences from a place of sorrow or disdain. 'FLEX' is not that. It celebrates the silliness, fun and immaturity of girlhood in the American South. So, regardless of the flaws the characters may have in the play, I want folks to know this show is a celebration of Black women and girls in the American South.
"There is a character in 'FLEX,' April, who is pregnant," Jones goes on. "She goes down the rabbit hole that many young girls who make that discovery go down. During my high school years, abstinence was preached. The late '90s were the heyday of the 'born again virgin.' As with many communities in which abstinence or purity was stressed, teenagers did have sex often. And young men and women were faced with the decision of whether to bring a child into the world or not. These teenaged girls deal with that in their own very teenaged girl ways.
"Although Roe v. Wade is never mentioned in the play, there is a moment that the complexities of ideas surrounding Roe v. Wade are very clear."
Jones' words are often called poetic, and that's no surprise.
"A lot of my plays begin with a poem. With 'FLEX,' I wrote a poem for each character in what I then perceived as their voice. So, in my first draft the characters' individuality rang loud and clear. I honestly think my other skills writing all feed into and help with playwriting."
But poetry might also have hindered the creation of "FLEX."
"I had to find the correct form to write it in. When I was going through my poetry phase, I couldn't bring myself to write a basketball poem," Jones admits. "But when I committed to telling the story through narrated performance (a play) I saw how those worlds, poetry, basketball, and play structure collided."
Turner Sonnenberg, the director of the play at TheatreSquared, says audiences should expect "bold and rich characters as well as beautiful, poetic language even when it's in everyday vernacular. Her sense of rhythm is like magic."
TheatreSquared's Singleton praises "her ability to capture the heart of characters, to make characters multidimensional," calling it "brilliant."
"You don't ever leave her work hating a character -- whether you agree with what the character did or not, you see their humanity. And you see the reasons why they did what they did -- you understand about the complications of life, and that there are many different sides to a story, and that perception is not always reality."
"She gives a voice to the voiceless and makes visible the lives and ideas that have remained in the shadows," adds Turner Sonnenberg.
Before her arrival last weekend in Fayetteville, Jones had been at the University of California at San Bernardino, working on her next play, "A Medusa Thread."
"I don't think it will ever be easy to push a play out," she says. "There are so many ideas coming at you. And, the characters fill your head with conversations that can go on and on. The key to getting it done is learning to compartmentalize, but damn. That's hard to do."
SELF PORTRAIT
Candrice Jones
• DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Jefferson Memorial in Pine Bluff, April 5, 1981.
• THE BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED WAS: My Uncle Hurley told me if you can write you can do anything.
• THE QUESTION I GET ASKED THE MOST IS: What is it like being a new mother. It's confusing and amazing.
• MY CURRENT READ: The plays I'm writing. LOL. The most recent and inspirational read is "Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson.
• IF I HAD AN EXTRA HOUR IN THE DAY, I'D: Catch up on some of my favorite TV.
• THE FIRST THING I DO IN THE MORNING IS: Laugh at my baby, Zora, who's probably already laughing at my snoring. She thinks snoring is hilarious.
• THE LAST THING I DO AT NIGHT IS: Y'all are just trying to be mushy. I hug and kiss my baby.
• IF I HAD THE POWER TO CHANGE ONE THING IN THE WORLD, IT'D BE: Every human being would be able to function highly in their own mode of literacy and would pass that knowledge on to the next generation as a gift. Wow. I've never been asked that question; I kinda like my answer. Can you tell I was once an English teacher?
• IF MY LIFE WERE WRITTEN FOR THE STAGE, THE ACTOR I'D PICK TO PLAY ME WOULD BE: Dame-Jasmine Hughes. She's the only person who could get the accent and sensibilities right.
• MY HEROES ARE: Every Black woman who has knocked down doors and paved the way to create opportunities for me.
• ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME: Anxious
“She’s typically kind of feisty, we all are, we grew up that way,” Johnny Jones says of his sister, Candrice. While she taught at the high school level before turning her full attention to playwriting, he has been teaching at the college level for 12 years and is currently a professor of theater at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville — and still her big brother. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/TheatreSquared)