Elizabeth Howell and Dean Biasucci in the Wyoming workshop production of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”
Hollywood, Nebraska, the six-actor comedy by Kenneth Jones about two actresses who return to their remote hometown to deal with separate family emergencies, is now published and licensed by Dramatists Play Service, the same Concord Theatricals imprint that handles the playwright’s breakout play Alabama Story. The new play, which is reminiscent of Broadway Bound, Steel Magnolias and On Golden Pond, was first released by DPS as an “e-pub” in summer 2024. In January 2025, the printed Acting Edition was published. The play can be licensed and performed immediately. At least two productions are scheduled for the 2026-27 season.
For performance rights information or to snag an e-pub or hard copy of the script, make an inquiry at the Concord Theatricals website. You can learn more about the play and playwright at Kenneth Jones’ page on New Play Exchange.
The play got its New Jersey premiere by South Camden Theatre Company, Feb. 28-March 16, 2025. Its Nebraska premiere happened March 21-30, 2025 at Lofte Community Theatre in Manley, NE. Productions in Denver and Ashland, VA are planned for 2026-27.
Hollywood, Nebraska was an audience favorite when it had an Equity workshop production at Wyoming Theater Festival in Sheridan, Wyoming. It later had a three-theater rolling world premiere in the 2022-23 season at Oak Ridge Playhouse in Tennessee, Lamb Theatre in Iowa and by Wetumpka Depot Players in Alabama, where audiences embraced it as comfort food.
Nora Chester as Alma at Wyoming Theater Festival.
A scattering of other presentations — including at North Street Playhouse in Virginia, Actors Community Theatre in Florida, Stissing Center for Arts and Culture in New York, and Naked Stage in British Columbia — followed and preceded the summer 2024 Dramatists Play Service publication of the play. A monologue from the play was selected by publisher Smith & Kraus for its annual “Best Men’s Stage Monologues 2024.”
“I think the universal idea of ‘coming home’ is one of the reasons why companies have embraced the play,” Jones said. “After the worst days of the pandemic, audiences are coming home to theaters again. And they want comfort and laughter and nourishment and hope — a feeling of belonging to family.”
Here’s how the female-forward Hollywood, Nebraska is billed:
“Two fortysomething actresses have returned to their once-thriving hometown in rural Nebraska. Jane is in from L.A. to check on her ailing mom, Alma. Andrea’s back from New York City to bury her father. Distracted by two charismatic local men—a handsome widower and a rough-and-ready laborer—the old friends navigate complicated feelings about their careers, love, and loss, leading to an overdue showdown between Jane and her mother. HOLLYWOOD, NEBRASKA is a hope-filled, tears-and-laughter comedy about small towns and big dreams, parents and children, the urge to be creative, and the ache—and joy—of coming home.”
Joseff Stevenson and Michelle Jasso and Lance and Andrea in the Wyoming workshop production of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”
The contemporary play about small towns, big dreams, moving away and coming home is a feast for four actresses who are eager to play complex, tough, aspirational characters: two women in their forties who left town years ago, a senior woman who stayed, and a star-struck teenage girl who wants out.
They’re abetted by two blue collar men — fiftyish and thirtyish, respectively — in a world that’s bittersweet, warm and funny. The playwright calls the play “a tribute to creativity and creative people; it seeks to reframe who we call creative and where creativity dwells. Sometimes, it happens in the middle of nowhere.”
Hollywood, Nebraska received early development from Off-Broadway’s TACT/The Actors Company Theatre, Wyoming Theater Festival (which produced a full workshop production in 2017, directed by Scott Alan Evans), Actors Theatre of Indiana, Alma Theatre Company in San Francisco, Ground UP Productions in New York City and Music Theatre of Connecticut.
Michelle Jasso as Andrea and Elizabeth Howell as Jane in the Wyoming Theater Festival workshop production of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”
Here’s the character breakdown for the modern-dress play: JANE, forties, an L.A. actress; ALMA, seventies, mother of Jane; ROBERT, late forties/early fifties, a contractor; KATIE, fifteen, Robert’s daughter; ANDREA, forties, a New York actress; LANCE, thirties, a carpenter/contractor. The playwright encourages culturally diverse casting except for the roles of Jane and Alma; the mother and daughter are white folks, whose roots go back to European people who settled the Midwest in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Hollywood, Nebraska has two music sequences embedded in it, both to be “played” on an upright parlor piano — a piano-and-voice rendition of the classic song “Home! Sweet Home!” and a feverish piano-only riff on that song. If the actors have piano skills, sheet music in four keys is an added license option for the sung number. Sound files for the instrumental sequences are also licensable. Joseph Thalken created the play’s licensable musical elements.
Here’s a playwright note embedded in the script of Hollywood, Nebraska:
Dean Biasucci as neighbor Robert and Nora Chester as Alma in the Wyoming workshop production of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”
“There’s a small town in far western Nebraska where I’ve spent time, as an outsider, with people I love. Its heyday is over. Its population has dwindled to about 2,400. There is drought. Storefronts are boarded up. There are farms both fallow and fertile. Missile silos that once held weapons aimed at Russia during the Cold War have been decommissioned. For now. An oil boom ended. The railroad cuts through town, but it no longer offers passenger service. Interstate I-80 diverted traffic away from Main Street — the old Lincoln Highway — a long time ago. When I first visited there, I walked around the one-traffic-light downtown. I browsed at a thrift shop. I took pictures of broken windows at the Wheat Growers Hotel. I attended a church service. I shared dinners and played cards in a parlor with widows who loved to laugh and talk about their history. I was curious and inspired. I wondered about residents past and present — who left? who stayed? and why? — and it all made me think more deeply about what it means to lead a creative life. That dot on the map in the middle of nowhere was the jumping off point for my writing Hollywood, Nebraska.”
Meanwhile, Kenneth Jones’ six-actor drama Alabama Story, about a librarian persecuted for protecting children’s books in the Jim Crow South, will get seven productions in the 2024-25 season. More than 65 theaters have produced it so far. Learn more at Dramatists Play Service or read about its history here.
The company of the Oak Ridge Playhouse world premiere of “Hollywood, Nebraska” in 2022. L-R, Tim Reynolds as Robert, Kate Alexander as Katie (with back to us), Tyra Tucker Haag as Jane, Freddie Haddix, Jr. as Lance and Karen Brunner as Alma.
