 Artists Connection Theatre is a family-operated non-profit community theater in Jacksonville's Arlington neighborhood. Their latest production, A White Christmas, premieres this Friday, December 1st at 7.30 p.m. I'm joined now by a couple of actors and the director, Hattie Burwin. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Nice to have you here. Harrison Newton, one of the actors in the performance. Yes, hi everyone. And Joe Mora, another actor in the performance. Hello, happy holiday. I should tell you all everybody's wearing a Santa hat while they're here today, so I appreciate the holiday spirit. So thanks for coming. What is the story behind the theater? Why Arlington? How did the theater get started, Hattie? Yeah, so my mom back in 2012, she really wanted to give a theater to our community in the Arlington area because we were very active as kids and she could never find anything. So she wanted to give in our area anyway. So she wanted to give our area a more like a local theater that everybody could come to and audition no matter what artistic background you had. And yeah, she just wanted to give that to everybody. So you were a family of theater kids? Theater, singing, dancing, everything. Yeah. And I think she talked about the fact that, you know, the cost can be prohibitive when you have a bunch of kids that are all interested in doing theater. So how does this theater help fill that need? Yes, so nobody has to pay anything to be in the show. We do ask that they provide help with costumes, mainly. And then everything else sets, all the materials we need is all, we get all through donations and ticket sale and things like that. So, Joe, I saw White Christmas not long ago myself at a theater production at a school, but tell me what role you play and what a little bit about what you're doing in this theater company. Sure. Yeah. For this show, I'm one of the choreographer. So I'm doing the dances as well as one of the lead actors, Phil Davis. So Phil is a, he's a romantic and well, he kind of plays with females hearts and then Cupid catches up to him and he falls in love and a lot of singing and dancing. Oh, and also we're army veterans coming out of World War II. So all of that in the show mixed with a lot of classic Christmas crooning. Yeah, Harrison, tell us a little bit about the production for people who aren't familiar with White Christmas. Sure. Yeah, so it's, well, it's based on a book, White Christmas. And then that book was turned into a movie where being Crosby played Bob Wallace, which is who I'm going to be playing in the show. And then the musical was based off of that and his first production of it was in St. Louis in the early 2000s. And then it opened on Broadway in 2008 and 2009. So it's fairly modern musical, which I didn't know. The movie preceded the musical and it was very fascinating for me. It makes sense with some of the jokes that are in there. It's not period to the 50s, but it's a really, but all in all, it's really family friendly show. It talks about the spirit of Christmas and giving and seeing someone who's your friend, who's in need and giving up your personal vendettas in order to make someone else happy. Is this your first time with Act or have you done other shows previously? No, no. I helped my mom kind of fill cast roles in the beginning. I have a semi professional background in music. I attended the University of North Florida for vocal performance. I didn't finish my degree, but I did experience a lot of professional environments. And so being there, I helped my mom kind of, I guided her in the right direction as to what normally takes place in a theater. And since then, I've kind of offered my talents to the theater. And we did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat earlier this year and I played Joseph in that. And I also helped with directing the music. So I'm just very involved in this theater and I'm happy to be involved because this is my community. I grew up here. These are my people and I want to give them something that they can be proud of. I think we all do. My mom, who's the founder included. And so being able to do that and balancing work life, we don't get paid for this. It's all volunteer work. So balancing work life and home life, but being happy about doing it is really good. Patty, what is the goal in terms of being there in Arlington and being a community for Arlington? Just to bring something the whole family can be a part of because we have a wide range of cast members in age. We got eight-year-old auditioning and 80-year-old auditioning. It's for everybody and we definitely want to bring our community together in that way. That's our main goal. Well, thank you, Joe Mora, Harrison, Newton, Hattie Burwin for being here today. We appreciate it. White Christmas premieres this Friday, December 1st at 7.30 p.m. Good luck to you all. Break a leg. Thank you.