Interview: Hannah Jane of TAKE ME BACK TO BROADWAY

Hannah Jane is about to hit the internet with a new Facebook live concert, and, as talk of re-opening performance venues sets the city abuzz, the title of her show could not be more appropriate. TAKE ME BACK TO BROADWAY isn't only Hannah Jane's wish - it's the hope of every New Yorker who has missed the thrill of live entertainment, whether from the audience or from the footlights (which they don't use anymore but still...).

The supremely gifted up-and-comer saw her momentum stopped last year when the shutdown hit, but she didn't let it stop her for the last twelve months. HJ has busied herself with redecorating, crafting, photography, online performances and everything else she and her mom, author Steffanie M. Peterson, could get their hands on.

Well, March 24th is everyone's chance to see exactly what Hannah Jane has her hands on this month (and her vocal cords, too). In her 7 pm Facebook Live concert, HJ and Jon Nelson plan to deliver nothing but show-stopping numbers from The Great White Way - and anyone who has seen or heard Hannah Jane knows that, in her hands, anything can be a show stopper.

Before she steps in front of the ring light, I wanted to chat with HJ about all of it, from her newly decorated place to the life of a multi-tasking artist, with maybe a little chat about divas and roles and music. Oh, my.

This interview was conducted digitally and is shared with minimal edits.

Hannah Jane, welcome back to Broadway World and thank you for agreeing to chat with us today!

Hi! Thank you so much for having me!

We had a chance to chat, back in July, a few months into the year-long pandemic journey, and you were keeping busy and keeping positive. How was the second half of corona-life for you and your mom, Steffanie?

Gosh, I feel like July was a lifetime ago! I won't lie and say that it's been an easy 8 months, because it hasn't, for any of us. But the summer into fall brought my Mama and me some much-needed relief. We got outside more, were able to socially distance visit with friends we hadn't seen in months and just take in some fresh air and get out of the house a little more often.

Fall is when things really changed for us. While mom went back to work in June, it wasn't until September that I was able to pick up a couple of nanny jobs and start to get out of the house on a normal routine. But then winter hit. As the weather got colder and numbers of cases went up we retreated back to being stuck in the house more. Our lives became the familiar pattern of "go to work, come home, eat something unhealthy, watch a movie or work a puzzle and go to bed." It was like April and May all over again. Remembering the torture of those early months, we made an extra effort to mix things up on the weekends so that we didn't fall back into a rut. For us, that meant house projects - which meant trips to Michael's and Home Depot, easily two of our most favorite places to shop EVER! Before we knew it the holidays were upon us and were a welcome distraction. Like everyone else we missed being with our family but improvised as best we could with a FaceTime Christmas morning experience. All in all, while it was not an ideal year, we are both grateful to have had each other to weather the uncertainty and technology to keep us connected to the ones we love and miss so very much.

Any major crafting projects or decor changes?

The crafting projects at The Peterson Girls' house are never-ending! There is always something going on - especially around the holidays. My mom loves to decorate so right now we are half Easter and half St. Patrick's Day so the Easter bunnies are hanging out with Leprechauns! I think one of the fun parts of being home for a year is that we have definitely upped our holiday apartment decorating across all the seasons and holidays.

BUT - we did undertake two HUGE construction projects this winter and transformed both of our bedrooms. We built loft beds! We live in a small space, and we both just wanted more room/storage and the best way to do that in NYC is to build up. We enlisted the help of some friends and voila - we now have two loft beds and totally renovated bedrooms. It has made being stuck at home a little easier because we both have our own little spaces that we can retreat to that we actually enjoy.

Our next project involves procuring a piano which surely means more projects to try and fit it into our tiny little living room. Who knows what we might build next! Wish us luck!

I would love it if you would share with us two photos: one of your most recent DIY projects and one of your favorite photographs that you've made recently.

It was so hard to capture everything about my room in just one photo so I took a few!

This is one of my favorite photos from a family session I did with some sweet friends over the summer!

So, we are here today to discuss your upcoming Facebook Live concert TAKE ME BACK TO BROADWAY. Have you stayed pretty active with virtual shows during the last year?

Ahhhhhh, I am so excited about this one! I have definitely tried to stay active with virtual shows this last year. This will be my 5th show since June 2020. Virtual shows have been the only way for performers to do what they love for the last year. Being a performer is part of who I am - it's not just a job or a hobby. It's something special that I can't even really put words around. I NEED to perform like a fish needs to swim. It's part of my genetic makeup to be on a stage telling stories and connecting with audiences. To have that yanked out from under our entire industry so abruptly without a clue when things might go back to normal was unlike anything I have ever experienced. I feel like I have a little hole in my soul when there isn't theater in my life. So for me, I had no choice but to dive into the virtual scene. I wanted to stay connected the best I could and this offered me a way to do that.

What I love about this medium is that each show has been very different from the one before and I would like to hope that with each one I got a little better at the tech side of things. And every one of them meant so much to me. Not only because I was able to perform, but because I was able to connect with an audience, work with musicians that I have missed so much (and some new ones, too!) and interact with friends and family that COVID was keeping me from seeing from all over the country for the hour or so that I was LIVE. I am such a people person and when I see people commenting during my videos and I can interact with them, it makes me so happy. I don't think I even have words to describe how happy it makes me. It's no comparison to being on a stage with a live audience, but it has helped fill the void that the shutdown of live performances left on my heart this last year.

As a person with a big presence in live performance venues, how did you learn to adjust your performance for the virtual screen performances?

That's a great question. I am not sure I have 100% mastered the art of performing behind a camera in super tight spaces, but I do think with each virtual show it's getting better. My biggest challenge is that I have always loved using the stage and my microphone as an extension of my performance. Truthfully, standing still is sometimes really hard for me. I want to be able to move around and use my body to help tell the story and that's really hard to do standing in front of an iPhone camera, in a tiny apartment with a ring light in front of you and your pianist right next to you.

I have really had to step back and watch each performance and take note of things that physically just didn't work on screen that may have worked beautifully on stage with a live audience. One of the things I have truly enjoyed about this setting is how casual it can be. It's just more relaxed all the way around. If we mess up we can just start again! We can banter in between songs a little more and we can play off the comments from the audience. You don't get to do those things in a live theater space.

I truly love to see people hop on the live stream and say hello and chat back and forth with me, my musical director and even my mom! It's like we are sitting right inside their living room. I think the coolest thing that has happened is receiving texts from people with pictures of me on their television or computer with little notes of encouragement. "Hey, watching you on our big screen!" Or videos from some of my friends who have littles of them dancing and watching me on the screen. What could be better than a tiny little child singing and dancing to you singing up on their TV screen?!

With a little virtual experience behind you, what have you planned out for the show on March 24th, and what letter grade would you give your newfound abilities as an internet performer?

I am so excited!! This is what brought my mom and me to NYC. When live music shut down a year ago it was like someone blew out a little light inside my soul. As we see signs that the world is opening back up again I haven't been able to stop singing the songs that were most silenced by this pandemic. BROADWAY!

This show is chock-full of some of my favorite show-stopping tunes from the world of contemporary musical theater. A few of these have been trickled into my previous shows here and there but most are brand new to my repertoire because they are from shows that came out in just the last few years, some of which were cut short when the pandemic hit. I can promise you this - every single one of them will make you want those Broadway theaters to open SOON!!!!

I did not like getting graded in school, so giving myself a grade is hard! I think a solid B+ is a fair assessment from my side of the camera - and hopefully, my viewers will give me a little grace and agree!

Have you found that working virtually has spread your fan base to new places, and have you connected with internet fans through these shows?

Oh, absolutely! My mom and I talked after the first two shows that my Facebook friend requests and Instagram followers seemed to increase and a lot were people I didn't know but have now become familiar names we see during LIVES.

I hear from friends often that they shared the link and their parents or grandparents tune in and now follow my journey. That's just really cool to me. I definitely have more people watching each time I do a show, which is one of the reasons I keep doing them. As long as people want to tune in, I will show up and sing!

I will be honest, for me, the silver lining of having to perform virtually is that the village that helped my Mama raise me can be part of the journey in real-time without having to physically be in NYC. My friends and family in WV are everything to me. They believed in me when I was a kid with a dream and they helped launch us to NYC. For the last year, they have had a front-row seat from the comfort of their own couches to performances that weren't even a thing before COVID took over the world. Seeing their names pop up and hearts flying across the screen is a beautiful reminder of where I came from and the support and love that pours out from those beautiful WV hills into The Peterson Girls and our crazy adventures.

This concert is about your love of the Broadway stage. Do you remember the details of how and when you became aware of the musical theater art form and the Great White Way?

Yes! I was 9 years old and it was the middle of the summer. My mom had gotten a message from a friend that one of the local community theaters was producing their first musical under a new director and I should audition. The musical was Annie. I had been singing around my town for about 5 years but had never auditioned for any theater productions, so this was all new to us.

I remember driving to the audition and Mama said, "Gosh, if you could just be an orphan that would be so much fun!" I was excited to audition and since I really didn't know what I was getting myself into, I wasn't really nervous. Long story short - the director called three days later and offered me a part. He offered me Annie! I was shocked. My Mama even said "Are you sure you called the right person? This is Hannah Jane Peterson you called?" He said, "Yes Ma'am, I know who I called."

It took about one rehearsal for me to fall in the love with the process of "making theater." I remember I couldn't wait for the next day to go back. I was off book in three weeks and knew not only my lines but everyone else's lines, too. That was my first lesson, let the director direct and you worry about your own self.

Then, opening night. I was not ready for the flood of emotion that came over me the moment I stepped onto that stage. Lights. Costumes. Music. The audience. Oh, the audience! It all came together like a perfectly painted picture. I will never forget running off stage to do a quick change - a very quick change I might add. I had 45 seconds to completely change clothes. I looked at my Mama and said "I am going to do this for the rest of my life." And before she could say anything I was back out on stage. I knew that night, my first night on stage with an audience, that I wanted to do live theater for the rest of my life.

From there it's all a blur. I began to download every musical theater show I could find. My voice teachers would recommend songs and I tried out for every production I could. I was literally obsessed with being on a stage. It was the place where I discovered what I was put on this earth to do.

Here I am 11 years later and nothing has changed. I still want nothing more than to be on a stage. My heart beats a different way when I am on a stage with a live audience in front of me. And my prayers before bed every single night are that someday I will get the chance to be on a Broadway stage telling some amazing story like so many incredibly talented women before me have done.

If you could put yourself into a summer repertory company doing five musicals, how would you cast yourself?

Oh, Stephen, you're really testing me here. I can really only pick five? That's IMPOSSIBLE to do so I broke it up based off of Golden Age and Contemporary - and a few extras just for giggles ;).

Golden Age:
Nellie Forbush - South Pacific
Lois Lane - Kiss Me Kate
Annie Oakley - Annie Get Your Gun
Laurey Williams - Oklahoma
Julie Jordan - Carousel

Contemporary:
Eva Peron - Evita
Sophie - Mamma Mia
Fiona - Shrek
Elle Woods - Legally Blonde
Mary Poppins - Mary Poppins

Honorable Mentions:
Marian Paroo - The Music Man, Fanny Brice - Funny Girl, Baker's Wife - Into The Woods, Katherine Pulitzer - Newsies, and Portia - Something Rotten

This is Women's History Month - tell me about the women from the history of Broadway who have most inspired you, not just their names but what they have meant to you as women and artists.

Gosh, there are so many. As a younger performer, with every new show I discovered, I also discovered a new female lead that I needed to know more about. It was (and continues to be) a never-ending cycle of incredible women. But there are definitely a few that I would say are "partly responsible" for me falling in love with this profession.

Kristin Chenoweth - I sometimes can't put into words how much I look up to her. She was one of the first female theater performers that I discovered. She was like me - a small ball of fire. And she was a soprano! AHHHHH!!! I could sing what she was singing and that was exhilarating. After Annie, Wicked was the next soundtrack that occupied my CD player. There was just something raw and authentic about her. Before we even decided to move to NYC my Mama surprised me with a long weekend here to see her at Carnegie Hall. I sat on the very edge of my seat the whole time. I remember thinking that she was more than just a singer, she was an entertainer - and that's what I wanted to be. I also related to how open she was about her faith and her constant emphasis on love first. My faith and the message of love are things that are very important to me and as a young performer to have someone to look up to that shared a love for music but also a love for all people made her all the more admirable to me.

Barbra Streisand - I don't remember the exact moment I discovered Babs, but I do remember being a little girl listening to her with my Mama and my Nana. They both loved her! I will always remember the first time I watched Funny Girl. I was about 12 years old and it was during one of our famous Mother/Daughter movie nights. I immediately connected with her voice, there was just something about her that drew me in. I listened to every song with wild anticipation that night. And for the next several months I watched every Babs movie I could get my hands on. Fast forward several years and I was gifted two tickets for my high school graduation to see her at Madison Square Garden. That night made me fall more in love with her than I could have ever imagined possible. Hands down, my favorite part of the show was when she told the story of singing the infamous duet of 'Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again' with my beloved Judy Garland. Before she even began to tell the story a photograph of her and Judy sitting on the arrow-shaped platform flashed up on the big screen behind her and before I knew it my cheeks were wet with tears of joy. She then began to sing the duet along with the recording of Judy and I remember closing my eyes as I became part of the audience of The Judy Garland Show on October 4th, 1963 as they sang it live for the first time. Hearing Barbra share stories of her time in the theater gave me a deeper admiration for her and a sense of hope for my own journey as I continue to chase my dreams.

Joanna Gleason - Joanna Gleason was a later arrival on my theater journey. Not until I was cast as The Baker's Wife in my middle school production of Into The Woods was I introduced to this amazing woman. I watched a few videos of her as the Baker's Wife and what was supposed to be research for my character became a deep dive into everything I could find about her. The more videos I watched and facts and stories I read, the more I loved her. She has very distinct confidence on stage that intrigued me. She just seemed completely at home on the stage. A few months after we moved to NYC my mom surprised me with tickets to the 2015 Into The Woods Cast Reunion. I was excited to see everyone from the original cast, including Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, but I was MOST excited to see Joanna. The moment she walked on stage, I felt my heart skip a beat. That same comfortable confidence that she exudes when performing was exactly what she carried onto that stage that afternoon. I hung on every word she said, but something I will always carry with me is the memory of her singing Moments In The Woods. Yet again, another fierce woman who brought me to tears with their talent.

Julie Andrews - What do you say about Julie that hasn't already been said?? Her gentle spirit, kind heart and her love for others are just a few of the things I admire most about her. My introduction to Julie was the same as most kids I imagine ... watching Mary Poppins. Even before I discovered theater, movie musicals were always my favorite and Mary Poppins was at the very top of the list in our house. When my Mama introduced me to The Sound of Music, my view of Julie took a turn. Like many times before, I fell down the rabbit hole of watching movies, listening to music and reading stories about her. I loved how feminine she was; always a lady. She just seemed so glamorous to me. One of my favorite movies will forever be Star! from 1968 in which Julie portrays the life of Gertrude Lawrence. Her performance in this film is the greatest masterclass in authenticity and simplicity. Her storytelling and vocal ability never ceases to amaze and inspire me. I also admire her relationship with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. They are extremely close and work together often. It joyfully reminds me of the relationship I have with my Mama. And anything that reminds me of my Mama is something truly special.

Who are the women in the business that you feel have taken an interest in mentoring your art and your career?

First off, let me say how grateful I am for each of these women and the mentoring/friendship they have shown me over the past few years. They have played such a pivotal role in my journey and I couldn't be more grateful for each of them.

I first met Kristy Cates in January of 2014 when I began taking voice lessons from her at the age of thirteen. As our lessons continued over the following months a very unexpected bond began to form. Not only was she a Broadway performer who was teaching me voice, but she was a woman who was taking an interest in my well-being and how my journey and dreams were progressing. She continues to be an active part of my journey offering practical advice and help with anything I need, whether that be performing or just life in general. I have seen her perform on and off-Broadway numerous times and have even had the pleasure of performing with her in my own Cabaret show, Lady Legends of Broadway. No matter how many times I see her perform, or work with her, I never cease to be amazed by her talent. I have so much respect and love for Kristy and I am forever grateful for her, my Mama Diva.

The story of how I came to know the amazing Coco Cohn is one of my favorites and I tell it quite often because I love how unique it is. In short, I met Coco at the stage door after an evening performance of Mamma Mia at the Shubert Theater. We bonded instantly over the flowers that we were both wearing; mine clipped in my hair and hers pinned on her dress. I spewed my story of how I wanted to be on Broadway and to my shock she actually took the time to stop and listen to me. As we parted she encouraged me to chase my dreams and not let anything get in my way. A few months after we moved here, our paths crossed again when Mama and I came across an opportunity to audition for a kid's cabaret she was directing. I was determined to work with her and to my delight, she actually remembered me. The rest they say is history! My relationship with Coco blossomed during that cabaret and has continued to grow. Since then she has taken me under her wing and mentored me on all things performing and life. She has directed both of my solo shows and I always have this feeling that she just gets me in a way not everyone does. She challenges me and pushes me to be the best I can possibly be and I will cherish my relationship with her forever.

I met KT Sullivan (aka my Cabaret Mama) my junior year of high school when I competed in the first annual Mabel Mercer; Mabel's Babies Competition. From the first moment I met KT, I felt connected to her. She was so unbelievably kind and I knew right off the bat there was something special about her - and I was correct. KT was responsible for giving me the opportunity to stage my very first solo cabaret show and welcoming me as a young performer into the cabaret family. I have seen KT perform many times and from each performance, I learned something new. The beauty and simplicity she delivers with each song she sings astounds me. She has taught me so much about the art of performing, song selection and storytelling. She believed in me when she didn't know me from Adam. She offered me so many opportunities to perform over the last several years that allowed me to grow in my craft and fall deeper in love with performing. I adore KT and look forward to many more opportunities to learn from her and witness firsthand the magic she brings to the stage.

Hannah Jane, you and your mother have become a pretty well-known pair around town. For Women's History Month, tell me about Steffanie Myers Peterson.

This might be the easiest question of them all because it is so easy for me to talk about my amazing Mama Bird! (One of the special things we share with each other are fun nicknames. She calls me her Baby Bird or her Song Bird and I call her my Mama Bird!) In fact, I could probably write a book about all the things I love about her. Speaking of books, my mom is an author! You should go buy her book The Hot Mess Express: The Peterson Girls Adventures on Amazon right after this! My mom was so brave to write about our story of how we gave up everything that was familiar and got on our magic carpet of dreams - and we are still here. Her goal when writing the book was not to just tell our story but to encourage others to chase their dreams. I can tell you without a doubt that it is one of the best books I have ever read. But hey, I'm a little bias. ;)

My mom has been there for me from day one and still remains my biggest cheerleader. She is the bravest, selfless, kindest person I know. Her heart for others astounds me. My mom is the perfect blend of southern and city. It is impossible for her to cook for just two people, so we always have room for guests in The Peterson Girls House. She loves to play card games and her favorite color is pink. She is constantly thinking of gifts she can buy or make for others and she is always willing to put someone else's needs above her own if that means showing love and support to someone who needs it. My mom is the definition of a 'cool mom.' She is always honest with me, whether it be what I want to hear or not. She always has my back and my best interest at heart. She is protective (you don't want to test a southern mama!) and she gives the best hugs. If you have met my mom, consider yourself lucky because you've met one of the greatest women on this earth. She is the most incredible person and I am so grateful to call her my mom.

Thank you for going on this crazy journey with me and for being my other half. I love you more than the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky, mama!

HJ, thanks so much for coming back to visit with us and I can't wait to see TAKE ME BACK TO BROADWAY on March 24th!

Thank you so much!

See Hannah Jane - BACK T0 BROADWAY on March 24th at 7 pm ET on Facebook Live HERE.

Visit the Hannah Jane website HERE.

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