David Alford

David Alford joins Baldwin Wallace as visiting assistant professor of acting. Previous teaching stops include Berry College as visiting artist-in-residence, and his alma mater, Martin Methodist College (now University of Tennessee Southern), where he designed and implemented the school’s first dramatic arts program.

An experienced writer, director, artistic director and teacher, Alford has worked steadily as an actor since graduating from the Juilliard School for Drama in 1991. He is best known known for playing Bucky Dawes on the ABC/CMT/Lionsgate series “Nashville” for its six seasons. Other notable screen credits include “The Blacklist” (NBC), “The Good Fight” (CBS/Paramount), and “The Last Castle” (Dreamworks), among many other independent projects, commercials, and voiceovers. He has also appeared in over seventy professional theatre productions. Recent credits include Mr. Marshall in Manhattan Theatre Club's Tony Award-winning revival of "The Little Foxes.” His critically acclaimed one-man performance of Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” has been a holiday staple in the Nashville area since the mid-1990s.

Alford was co-founder and artistic director of Mockingbird Theatre, a small equity company in Nashville, during its 10 years of existence, where he appeared in most of its shows. He then served briefly as executive artistic director for Tennessee Repertory Theatre (now Nashville Rep) before becoming the company’s first artist-in-residence. He has directed more than 30 collegiate and professional stage shows, including productions of his original plays “Spirit: The Authentic Story of the Bell Witch of Tennessee,” and his bluegrass musical “Smoke: A Ballad of the Night Riders,” both of which are staged yearly in his home town of Adams, Tennessee. As a screenwriter, he has done credited and uncredited work on numerous film projects, including “Adrenaline,” a feature-length film shot in one continuous unedited take, in which he also played the lead.

Alford has been the recipient of many acting and career achievement awards and is a longstanding member of both SAG-AFTRA and Actor’s Equity. His book “Living The Dream: The Morning After Drama School” (with Brian Horner) is available through Kendall Hunt Publishing.