Anybody Have a Map? Dear Evan Hansen's Jessica Phillips Opens Up About Gains & Lessons

Living near the theater district during the Broadway shutdown, photographer and performer Matthew Stocke has been haunted walking past the empty theater palaces sitting in repose, waiting for the lights and stars to return. In this new Broadway.com photo feature, he reunites members of the theater community with their Broadway home Away From Home.

JESSICA PHILLIPS
DEAR EVAN HANSEN

Though Jessica Phillips is no longer playing Jordan Fisher's mother in Dear Evan Hansen eight times a week with Broadway shut down, she has been able to spend a lot of quality time with her two teenage sons Malcolm and Jonah. Before assuming her role as Heidi Hansen in the Tony-winning musical, Phillips appeared on Broadway in Leap of Faith, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Next to Normal and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Here, she opens up about the best part of her time away, learning to be kinder to herself and why human connection feels like a luxury. 

"In a crisis, you imagine the worst case scenario and then at the same time, you’re thinking, ‘Nothing too drastic could happen.’ That Thursday [March 12, the day of the shutdown], I had friends who had come to town the weekend before. I met them on the Upper West Side at Alice’s Teacup for brunch. I checked my phone and saw the announcement about Broadway closing. This is exactly what I knew was coming. But at the same time, it couldn't possibly be real....My story is not one of ‘Broadway was all I could think about.’ My parents are in academia. I’m really no good at anything that requires hand-eye coordination—nothing with a ball. The arts were a great outlet for me in terms of expressing myself. I miss the stimulation, the challenge of throwing myself into these roles and these creative projects. I look forward to that electricity in the air when a show is about to start. That’s why we do it in the first place....I haven’t thrown myself into learning a new skill. My husband has taught himself to be a carpenter. I have other friends who are writing books, buying homes and moving, doing lots of big, life-changing things. I’m not. I can barely get through a book without putting it down and starting a different one. I’ve had to learn how to be more gentle to myself around this assumption that I have to be accomplishing something all the time. What's brought me the most joy is that I get to have dinner every night with my kids. I’ve been able to joke with them and argue politics with them and go outside and plant things with them and play games. I can say 100 percent for sure that if this quarantine never happened, we as a family would have never had that experience....I miss human connection. I don’t just mean colleague to colleague or even cast to audience. Just being able to walk in the door and drop into the stage manager’s office to say hello. That feels like a dream right now. To stand two feet away from someone and have a screaming match, or to pull someone onto my shoulder who’s crying—those seem like luxuries right now."

Photos by Matthew Stocke/Matt James Photo NYC for Broadway.com
Reporting by Lindsey Sullivan