Interview: Jeff Ward Talks Working With Aubrey Plaza & Christopher Abbott

Jeff Ward, best known for his on screen performances in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., One Piece, Brand New Cherry Flavor, Channel Zero: No-End House, Hacks, and many more, is now stepping into the role of director, bringing John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea back to the stage.

Starring Christopher Abbott and Aubrey Plaza in her stage debut, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea will begin previews on October 30th at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and open on November 13th for a 10-week limited engagement.  

BroadwayWorld spoke with Ward about what it's like working with Plaza and Abbott, his passion for Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, how he approached the play, and much more. 

Danny and the Deep Blue Sea marks your stage directorial debut. I would love to learn how this project came to you, how did you become attached to it?

I had an idea for this production rumbling around in my head for several years, and I always wanted to do it with Chris, because Chris and I have been friends for a very long time, and we’ve always talked about doing something together. I always thought that he would be an absolutely perfect Danny. He’s such a tremendous actor in general, so it just felt like such a perfect marriage of part and actor in my head. I pitched him my idea for it, and my vision for it, and how we would do it a little bit differently than anyone has done it. There’s only been two productions of it in New York ever. I didn’t see the first one because I was born two years later, and the second one, I was out of New York when it was running, so I didn’t see either one. But I know a lot about them, and I wanted to do something a little different.

Chris was into the idea, so we teamed up to try and make it happen. I reached out to my friend Mark Berger, who produces for Sam Rockwell, we went to college together. I pitched them on it, and they got involved. Then Chris and I were trying to figure out who was right for Roberta, and when Aubrey came up it just seemed like such a natural fit. I hadn’t done a play before, so she wanted to talk, and we all had a couple Zooms and talked about it. I pitched her on my ideas, and much to her credit, she was willing to take this chance. She was scared, I think, as anyone would be, taking on their first stage role. But she’s also such a truly special and incredibly talented actor that I think she was craving this kind of challenge, and I’m very excited for people to see how up for it she is. Because she’s so good, and it’s been exciting to see it coming together.

Most of your recent work has been on screen and in front of the camera, how does it feel not only be coming to the stage with Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, but putting on your director’s hat for it?

It’s great, I have always wanted to direct, and it’s sort of been in the back of my mind since college, really. I directed a bunch in college, and I directed a play out here in Los Angeles, called Tape by Stephen Belber. It was much more lowkey than this one is, it was really fun, and I felt like I took to it, and I wanted to keep exploring it. It’s hard because, of course, I love acting, and I haven’t been on stage, especially in New York, in years, so I really miss it, but I’m so excited to be directing a play that I love so much, that has been so close to me for so long.

It’s interesting because I think something that has surprised me about directing, is I feel so close to both characters, where I think when you’re acting, you feel very close to one, to your person. I feel so attached to both of them and their journey. I care about Danny and Roberta both in equal measure, so much, and that’s been unique. And getting to work with Scott Pask, who’s our set designer, who’s a legend, and John Torres, who’s an unbelievably good lighting designer, and Arianne Phillips, who’s our costume designer, who’s an Academy Award nominee, it just feels like to be able to collaborate so closely with so many people in so many different departments, you do get to do it somewhat as an actor, but not to the same degree as when you’re directing. So, it’s been really thrilling, and exciting, and obviously terrifying at times [laughs]. But I love it, and I’m very excited about all the ideas that are coming together with it.

How did you approach this play once it went into motion? What’s the first thing that you did when you got the script and started digging in?

I first read this play when I was 18, I’m 36 now, so this play has lived with me for half my life. I’ve had three big brushes with it; in college when I got to know it and fell in love with it, I worked on it in my mid-twenties, and I was going to try to do a production of it myself, playing Danny, and then other stuff got in the way and I never ended up doing it. 

When I came back to it, looking at it through this lens of directing it, I do think I approach material the way an actor would, probably, in terms of the text. But I also think, for me, it was important to have some semblance of an idea of what I wanted to do with it before that, so that I could know what I was looking for, and what I was interested in, and the things that I wanted to highlight in the play. So, it was different, but it was very familiar. The way that I feel like I work as a director is very actor-centric because I can’t help it, and it has made for an amazing collaboration, in my mind, between, Aubrey and Chris and I. They are so smart and so talented, it feels fun to empower them and listen to them the way my favorite directors have with me.

What has the rehearsal process been like working with the two of them?

It’s been great. They’re both so talented, but they’re also very playful, and very fearless as actors, and that is so exciting, because it just explores so many different paths. We’ve been talking and working so much, conceptually and literally, on the text. I love basketball, and it’s like when you’re watching the Olympics, and it’s all these people that shouldn’t be together because they’re too good, all in one place! And that’s kind of what it feels like to me. It just feel so inventive, and creative, and all of us feel like we’re getting to do things that not every job allows in terms of how free and purely creative and artistically satisfying it is. Those things get to be our targets in a way that you don’t always get. That’s very exciting to me, and Aubrey and Chris are so good that it truly makes me want to come up with better ideas to serve how good their performances are.

This show means so much to you, and like you said, it hasn’t had many productions in New York. What are you most looking forward in bringing this play to the stage?

More people getting to experience it. I feel like it’s such an obvious play to anyone who’s ever been through theater school in any way. You come across this play so much that it’s sort of like, “Oh, what are you going to do, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea?” It’s so well-known in those circles that it’s almost a joke, which is why it really is not very well-known outside of that. I am so excited for more people to get to hear this writing and go on this journey with these two people.

I think Shanley’s writing in this play- and all of his work, but in this play in particular- there is so much poetry in the words that doesn’t ever become pretentious, or over the top, or overwritten, or sort of self-congratulatory towards the writer, it’s very honest and it’s very human. It’s heightened but it feels so attached to something real, and deeply relatable that I think everyone, I hope, really feels attached to each of them individually, and both of them together.

I think that Shanley did an unbelievable job at excavating different parts of who we all are, and separating them into these two characters and watching them clash against each other. I think the play deserves to be more well-known, which is hilarious to say about Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, because it’s incredibly well-known in the theater world. But I hope to reach outside of the theater world and have people appreciate and experience how amazing it is.