Young alumni couple who received care packages as students goes all in on assembly this year
March 18, 2026 — While Jon Richardson ’10 and Leda Hoffmann ’09 have been friends since Richardson’s first year at Grinnell College, most of their post-graduate friendship had been limited to liking each other’s Facebook posts.
That all changed in August 2021 when Richardson sent Hoffmann a message: “Hey, would you like to read my musical?”
Although Hoffmann ribs Richardson for reaching out early into his writing process (“You had a half a play when you messaged me!”), the pair has come a long way since Hoffmann directed Richardson as a student in the dystopian musical Urinetown during a run at the Harris Center two decades ago. Even back then, Richardson was enamored with Hoffmann’s directing.
Leda Hoffmann ’09, left, and Jon Richardson ’10 first worked on a musical together during a student production of Urinetown at Grinnell College.
“It was Leda’s first time directing a play, and I thought she was the best and I still do,” Richardson says. “Now here we are 20 years later.” Together, Richardson and Hoffmann built upon their friendship and mutual love for Grinnell faculty members like Monessa Cummins and Victoria Brown to help bring the production to fruition.
Richardson’s musical, The Jack of Hearts Club, premiered last fall and sold out its run at the Provincetown Theater, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, before opening night. It received rave reviews, won Broadway World Boston’s Best New Musical award earlier this year, and will be remounted beginning July 16 and running through Sept. 6.
In addition to reading the musical, Hoffmann attended a staged readings, directed workshops for the production in New York City and Provincetown, and ultimately directed the completed piece. Broadway World Boston, like Richardson, was enamored with her work, awarding her the prize for Best Direction of a Musical.
Richardson’s musical is set inside The Jack of Hearts Club, a fictional Provincetown cabaret, at the end of the summer in 1963. On a typical night at the cabaret, it’s one of the few places where queer characters can openly be themselves. The story takes place on the last night of the summer, when the cabaret turns its stage over to the townspeople, becoming an open mic for departing tourists and year-rounders alike.
The songs, in keeping with a central conceit of musical theatre, are moments of such deep, emotional feeling that the characters can only express them through song. “Leda and I are both queer, history nerds and being able to tell the story about these queer people in a time before Stonewall was a mission-driven piece of the puzzle,” Richardson says.
Richardson, right, and fellow actor Christopher Spaulding are shown during a scene in The Jack of Hearts Club.
Some of the musical is informed by Richardson’s professional experience. After serving as the student representative on the search committee that selected Raynard Kington to be the College’s president, Richardson was hired by executive search firm Isaacson, Miller and moved to Boston. After a few years, he decided to attend the New England Conservatory of Music (building on some of his work with Blanche Johnson Professor of Music John Rommereim and the Grinnell Singers). While he planned to return to the firm after graduating, he found that he could make a living as a professional musician playing original songs and covers in piano bars in Provincetown and across New England.
“Grinnell definitely instilled me with feeling that it’s safe to exist outside of the mainstream,” Richardson says. “It didn’t have a culture of conformity and it made me seek out spaces that were a little bit different or kind of weird. Authenticity can take you very far and being who you are is a great value as an artist. Grinnell was so affirming for gay people to exist and exist very loudly, which made me expect that in every space I found myself in afterward.”
The musical is also deeply enmeshed in Provincetown and historical memory. Richardson (who studied history at Grinnell and was advised by L.F. Parker Professor of History Sarah Purcell ’92) uncovered some archival photographs of Provincetown’s queer community in 1963 that shaped the writing process.
“People like to learn about how their queer ancestors may have spent a typical Saturday night at the end of the summer,” Richardson says. Beyond the accolades and sold-out showings, the musical has also tapped into something deeper.
“There are 110 people in the audience, and ten people in the cast, and there were some very beautiful, sublime moments where there were just silence and stillness. Everyone’s brain was synced up and everyone’s affection for the town was connecting with everyone else’s,” Richardson says. While out and about in Provincetown, Richardson and Hoffmann found themselves being stopped on the street by people, often with tears in their eyes, who said that Richardson had found a way to tell the story of their lives.
After attending stage readings and production workshops for The Jack of Hearts Club, Hoffmann ultimately directed the musical.
While Hoffmann has been teaching, studying, and working in theatre since completing her undergrad, a career in theatre wasn’t always a sure thing. When she was back on campus to attend the 2010 Commencement, she had a heart-to-heart with Victoria Brown. Was it selfish, Hoffmann wondered, to work in the arts when so many of her classmates were going into the Peace Corps and “saving the world?”
Brown looked at her and said, “Leda, just be on the side of good.” Hoffmann, who now works as the producing artistic director of The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio says, “All of us want to make a difference in the world, and I see the impact theatre makes every day.” Both she and Richardson share the sense that the arts are important in dark times because people need a place to laugh, commune, and feel.
“What gets me up every day to keep working in theatre is the effect it has on an audience. When we do it right, audiences leave energized, moved, and hopeful. There’s something so special about being in the same room to experience a story,” she adds.
This coming summer, audiences in Provincetown will get another chance to take a seat inside The Jack of Hearts Club and share that experience.
—by Joe Engleman ’14