Photo credit: Matthew Carasella.
"I like plays that feel like somebody took a fun house mirror and put it up to the real world, and it's sort of reflecting back a version of it to you. I find that, in looking at that reflection, you can start to understand a little more about your life," Jen Hoguet explained. Her tone held youthful energy and enthusiasm that revealed how much she truly loved the theater.
Hoguet is the fourth recipient of the T. Fellowship and the first woman to earn the distinction. Named for T. Edward Hambleton, the year-long program gives one aspiring producer $30,000 to develop a project. Meanwhile, fellows have access to classes at the Columbia University School of the Arts, and they benefit from intensive guidance from some of Broadway's greats. Hoguet's mentors will include famed producers Harold Prince, Margo Lion, Gregory Mosher, Tom Schumacher, Jeffrey Seller and David Stone.
Lion, whose career has garnered 20 Tony Awards and one Pulitzer, is eager to aid Hoguet on her journey as a female producer. "We will be there for her whenever she calls on us, every step of the way...reviewing revisions, evaluating development and production opportunities, discussing budgeting issues and suggesting strategies for approaching investors," she said.
Hoguet seems overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge at her disposal -- her idols are now teachers. She remembers reading theatrical biographies as an adolescent and learning about legends like Prince and Lion. Now, she can run to them with any question, benefitting from their expertise and empathy.
"The challenges I've had in terms of my own work -- they're challenges that they've all had, too," she said. "And they can approach them with a lot more perspective and a lot more experience."
Hoguet is an idiosyncratic candidate for the T. Fellowship because she has already attended Columbia, where she earned her masters in Theatre Management and Producing. Therefore, she'll be able to pop into lectures for refreshers and tailor the curriculum to her needs. However, her main focus during the fellowship will be a new work, The Boy Kings. Two years ago, Hoguet read Katherine Losse's 2012 memoir and found that it followed a play's narrative structure. She optioned the rights to the story and initiated a collaboration with actress and up-and-coming playwright Halley Feiffer, who has just finished a second draft of the script.
The Boy Kings resonated with Hoguet because of its familiar themes. Losse left graduate school to be Facebook's 51st employee in 2005 and rose through the ranks from customer support to ghostwriter for Mark Zuckerberg. But there was something unsettling about social media, and Losse opted out of her high-profile job for life as a writer. Hoguet connected with Losse's commentary on prestige and ambition.
"You finish school. You find yourself in a super powerful, important company, and you drink the Kool-Aid a little bit," she said. "There's something really intoxicating and seductive about having access to that much power and information before over time realizing, 'wait, hold on, this isn't for me. This isn't what I want.'"
Through The Boy Kings, Hoguet also plans to explore the macro influence of the technological revolution on human contact.
"I find social media terrifying," she explained. "It disconnects more than in actually connects. It makes it really easy for people to have these shallow connections rather than actually being in touch with people, or actually really participating in each other's lives. And that was something I've been wanting to play with onstage because in my mind, theater's the only medium that only exists with the audience."
Before diving into The Boy Kings, Hoguet produced Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth in Los Angeles and Frank Wedekind's Lulu in New York City. Her credits are varied, and she's attracted to any work that "has that element of making you laugh and making you cry." As a millennial, she especially appreciates plays with a 21st-century mentality, where characters feel relatable.
"The stories I'm drawn to and the things that I want to investigate further tend to be about our generation," she said. "I don't see a lot of stories about people I know onstage. And, oh gosh, there are a million reasons why that is, and there are a million theories about why that is. If I want those stories to be told, then I do have to invest in the telling of them myself."
For the theater, Hoguet may be a saving grace. Especially on the Great White Way, few performances seem current. Nostalgia for a better time is infecting Broadway's big wigs, who finance drab, archetypal musicals and plays about centuries passed. The Colonial Era. The Belle Époque. The '50s. Few sets look like today's streets, and so theater is losing its immediacy in exchange for a spectacle.
"I think it's [B'way] not necessarily where some of the most exciting stuff is happening, which is why this fellowship is cool: because it shows a real investment in helping change the dynamic of what's on Broadway," Hoguet said. "The danger is that theater becomes thought of as entertainment. It's not important. It's not valuable. It's not a necessity, it's a luxury."
Hoguet and the T. Fellowship mentors are trying to avoid a future reality where theatergoers disrespect drama because they don't understand it. Rather than isolating the public from an esoteric art form, Hoguet intends to produce better work that appeals to the masses. Then, they can discover the genius that resides in good performance.
"I'm really excited and interested in what will bring new people into the theater, what will drive new audiences to try this out and then stick around," she said.
The T. Fellowship is competitive, and Lion commented on the vast array of talent that dotted the list of applicants. Still, Hoguet made the final cut for her eagerness and initiative.
"In the end, like any start up business -- risky by nature -- a commercial producer first and foremost is selling themselves," Lion said. "Good ideas are important, but it's the passion and commitment and unstoppable determination that are essential qualities for a creative producer. We are convinced that Jen Hoguet has those qualities; she has a force of personality, intelligence and imagination that we all recognize as the mark of the real thing."