Jennifer Hubbard
Jennifer Hubbard, originally from Salisbury, North Carolina, has always loved words. She was that shy, bookish child who used to sneak a flashlight into bed and write poems, the one who used to hide from clowns at birthday parties. She was that grown-up who taught English for seventeen years, the one who threw away all her red pens and began living the dream of writing (in black ink) full-time.
Before moving to Charlotte in 2005, Jennifer worked and lived at Woodberry Forest School, a boys’ boarding school, where her duty, between the time a bell rang to signal the end of classes and another bell rang to signal the start of seated dinner, was to direct plays. “This is where it started,” she says, explaining that finding scripts with all-male casts became increasingly difficult. So after a while, she began writing them.
Over the past several months, Jennifer has had her scripts performed in Charlotte, Rock Hill, and Ohio, though the highlight of her playwriting life remains hearing Tom Scott first read, aloud, the Prince Charming character she created for The Fairy Tale Chronicles. “Tom got it immediately,” she notes, “the pace, the humor, the poignancy—everything.” Someday, she hopes to create a play as just-plain-knockout-gorgeous as A Streetcar Named Desire. Besides drinking wine with friends, riding bikes with her husband, and completing New York Times crossword puzzles, Jennifer also relishes the poems of Philip Larkin, the short stories of Alice Munro, and the opportunities to play slightly crazy people on stage. Her most sane role? Stella Kowalski. Her dream role? Blanche DuBois.
A theatre lover from an early age, Jennifer credits her mother, who took her to her first play (The Music Man), for her awe of “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” So, thanks a million, Mom! She would also like to thank her husband Steve Cobb, for his support and keen editing skills; Tom Scott, for being magic; and Donna Scott (no relation), for taking a chance on local writers—and, of course, for believing in fairy tales.