SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 22, 2023 (Gephardt Daily) — If you’re looking for a festive show that’s a little different from the usual fare, head to Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre next month for the new musical stage adaptation of “Christmas in Connecticut.”
This adaptation of the classic 1945 Warner Brothers film had its world premiere last year at Goodspeed Musicals in, yes, you’ve guessed it… Connecticut. It features lyrics by Jonathan Larson Award-recipient Amanda Yesnowitz, music by Grammy Award winner Jason Howland, who is a Pioneer Theatre Company alum as Musical Supervisor/Orchestrator on the world premiere of “Shucked,” and a book by Emmy Award-winner Patrick Pacheco and celebrated entertainment journalist Erik Forrest Jackson.
The new show, directed by Shelley Butler and choreographed by PTC artistic director Karen Azenberg, runs Dec. 1 through Dec. 16. While the piece had its debut during last year’s holiday season, its creators continue to develop and fine-tune the work, making the Salt Lake City mounting an all-new experience for audiences — and the only production of “Christmas in Connecticut” in the U.S. during the 2023 holiday season.
The story is described as follows: “From the bucolic paradise of her Connecticut farm, famed ‘Smart Housekeeping’ columnist Liz Lane dishes out advice on marriage, cooking, and homemaking to eager housewives across the country. There are just a few small details of which her readers aren’t aware: Liz actually lives in a tiny New York City apartment, she has never been married, and she can’t cook. When a beloved war hero who is a fan of the columnist is invited by Liz’s publisher to Christmas on the nonexistent farm, a musical comedy of errors ensues.
Gephardt Daily had the opportunity to speak with Tiffany Denise Hobbs, who plays Gladys Higgenbottom, assistant and fact-checker for the publisher of the magazine, Mr. Yardley, over the phone during the rehearsal period.
Hobbs is an actress and broadcast journalist that has trained at prestigious performing arts institutions including SMU, Yale, The Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade. She played Shenzi in the national tour of “The Lion King” for two years and was featured in the Broadway musical, “Waitress,” with Sara Bareilles. She was nominated by the Connecticut Critics Circle Awards as Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance as Olivia in “Twelfth Night” at the Yale Repertory Theatre. She also played Ursula in New York Shakespeare in Park’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” On TV, you may have seen her in “Atlanta,” “Ozark,” “Claws,” “The Mighty Ducks,” “She Hulk,” “Senior Year,” and “The Haunting of Hill House.” She has also appeared in the films “A Holiday Spectacular,” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”
Hobbs told us more about her character in “Christmas in Connecticut.”
“In my mind she’s one of those secretaries that, you know, if it weren’t for her, everything would just kind of go to crap in the office because Yardley is not as organized as she is,” she said. “They have a really interesting relationship in that regard. It’s definitely not contentious or anything like that, but she definitely keeps the ship afloat. And there’s an opportunity where she asks Mr. Yardley if she could do some extra work. She wants to also start fact checking the problems. There has been a need for that because they’ve had some journalists who have been duped by the interviewees that they’ve had and she’s like, ‘I’m so good, I pay attention to details, you should let me do it,’ and he’s like, ‘we don’t have a budget for it,’ and she’s like, ‘no, I’m going to prove to you that I can do it, and it should be done, and it’s worth every penny that you’d have to spend.’ And it’s because of Gladys that some things end up coming to light in the show in a very fun and exciting way.”
Hobbs also talked about having the creators of “Christmas in Connecticut” in Salt Lake City continuing to fine-tune the work, and what that journey is like for an actor.
“It’s been really fun, I mean honestly you don’t often get a chance to be in a room with the creators, especially when you’re plugged into a long-running Broadway show, doing a show that’s been licensed out so you don’t ever get to meet the original creators and also be a part of the work,” she said. “This is probably one of the handful of times I’ve been in the room as the piece is being made, and it’s so cool because it gives us a chance to bring ourselves to the character and help in that development. There will always be a little bit of me in how Gladys has been written because the creators want to watch the actors who are playing these characters. And they’re getting information from us as individuals, in so far as to how to continue developing the dialogue that the character says, but also musically; what notes make more sense for me as an actor. So it’s cool because it’s like, this feels like mine as opposed to something that someone else created and I’m just having to take over.”
We asked Hobbs how she juggles her work as an actor on stage and in film with also being a broadcast journalist for WJBF News Channel 6 in Augusta, Georgia, where she is based.
“That’s an interesting question,” she said. “I think the best way to preface this is that I think I’m still figuring that out. I started my broadcast news journalism journey about 14 months ago, so it was late summer of last year, essentially a full-time job, and they found out that I was an actor prior to my interview, and my hiring manager just mentioned, ‘what would you do with acting should we hire you?’ And I think I kind of giggled ‘cos I didn’t know that they knew I was an actor. And he was like, ‘I just want you to know, we want you to continue that, we don’t want you to stop, if you feel like you would have to. Just let us know when something comes up, and we will work around it.”
Hobbs added: “And so that was just kind of how that started, I ended up of course getting hired. I was very grateful for that because I wasn’t really expecting that would be the case and I was ready to just dive into broadcast journalism full-time. Acting was still, while I was doing it, full-time, but because of COVID and how things were returning after COVID and the actors’ strike, a lot of work was kind of drying out. So I was ready to make the transition if I needed to, but they just they gave me a really great offer and opportunity which I was really grateful for, and so I continued to audition. Most of my auditions were virtual, so that was helpful. So I was able to still work full-time throughout all of that. And then there were some times where I got some callbacks and chemistry reads where I had to go to like New York or Los Angeles and I let my boss know and he was like, ‘go, go, do it. Let us know how it goes.’
“And this [role at Pioneer] was just the first thing that actually came to fruition all the way to an offer. I got a lot of close calls in the last year with some big projects and they just ended up going in another direction, as they do. But I told my boss like ‘hey, it’s happened’ and they were just super, super supportive. They also just said, if you want to come back you can, obviously know that you always have a home here. It was quite interesting, but I felt like you know, even though it’s very different doing broadcast journalism, so many of the skills cross over. So I felt like kind of like a fish to water with a lot of things that I did have to learn, and that was a learning curve, but I felt really confident around the camera, talking to people, and I felt like the growth that I achieved also inspired my work as an actor.”
We also asked Hobbs about her Christmas plans and goals for next year.
“Christmas is a very big deal in my family, so I always make it home for that,” she said. “And then after that, in January, I go to work on a show at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, I’ll be working on an adaptation of ‘The Tale of Two Cities,’ so obviously it’s a change of pace from ‘Christmas in Connecticut,’ because it’s not a musical, obviously; textually the dialogue is a little bit more classic-leaning. A nice shift, as an actor, to play around with all the things.”
She will also continue to audition for future roles on TV and in film.
“Hopefully I will be continuing that, and I’m hoping some other shows line up, mainly in the TV, film world, there’s stuff coming up,” she said. “That’s where a lot of my momentum has led me, that and some other Broadway possibilities. My desire has been to sink my teeth into a series regular role on TV and I’m getting very close to that, so I’m hoping 2024 might be the year.”
Finally, I asked Hobbs how she finds work/life balance, especially when she is busy.
“You know, it’s hard, sometimes, to find that balance,” she said. “You have to be really intentional about it, especially because you know, work as an actor, it’s not like other jobs where it’s always 9-5 then it’s over. Sometimes you just don’t know after the next few weeks,” she said. “It’s just like a blank slate, it is hard to balance everything. But what I do for myself, which has seemed to work pretty well thus far, is that I always try to make my mornings like; wake up in enough time to have a routine. My routine can range, I work out a lot so it usually always includes that. And then I also do a little bit of meditating, reading, sometimes I like to just sit and listen to my favorite music and sing, and dance around the kitchen while I’m getting my breakfast and getting my food prepped for the day or something like that. I really just try to carve out a certain amount of time every single morning that’s truly just me time, and that has been really helpful. I also think other thing is that I make time for no matter what is to be with my family and my loved ones. Whenever I find a pocket of time that makes sense for me, I am often reaching out to people trying to schedule certain things because that is important. Sometimes you can get swept up in all the work and miss out on those times, and I really try to be intentional about seeing people so that I don’t miss out on things, life events, filling up my well with that social interaction with people that I love.”
“Christmas in Connecticut” runs from Dec. 1 through Dec. 16 at Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre at 300 S. 1400 East in Salt Lake City. Tickets are available here or by calling the PTC box office at 801-581-6961.
