“Hollywood, Nebraska” by Kenneth Jones will get Colorado and Virginia productions in the 2026-27 season.
Hollywood, Nebraska, my six-actor comedy about two actresses who return to their remote hometown on family business, will get its Colorado premiere in a 2027 staging by Firehouse Theater Company in Denver. That’s the same theater that produced the intimate and well-reviewed Mile High premiere of my play Alabama Story in 2025.
The Colorado run is fitting for my play for two reasons: Like Nebraska, the adjacent state is technically partly in the Great Plains region, but also because the main character — a TV actress named Jane — is an alumna of an unnamed graduate acting school in Denver. That’s my veiled homage to the late, great National Theatre Conservatory (NTC), the respected three-year MFA acting conservatory which had roots in New York City before being transplanted to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in 1984. It shut down in 2012 due to financial issues.
In the rueful comedy set in the early 21st century, Jane and her high school acting rival, Andrea, return to Hatcher, a town of 2,500 people in the panhandle of Nebraska. Jane’s mom has had an accident. New York theater actress Andrea has lost her father. They reminisce about their high school acting teacher who urged them to continue their studies regionally before leaping to New York or L.A.
Jane took the advice and studied in Denver; Andrea ignored her teacher and jumped to New York City.
Jeremy Elman will direct the Denver premiere Feb. 6-March 7, 2027, at Firehouse Theater Company’s home in The John Hand Theater, inside the historic Lowry Air Force Base Fire Station, on the campus of Colorado Free University in the Lowry neighborhood of Denver. Casting will be announced.
The presentation is another booking through Concord Theatricals, which handles the publishing and licensing of both Hollywood, Nebraska and Alabama Story. Please consider supporting living playwrights by purchasing a perusal copy of plays that are published. You can also read some of my plays for free at New Play Exchange, the web marketplace that shares thousands of titles for a nominal annual fee.
Elizabeth Howell and Dean Biasucci in the Wyoming Theater Festival staging of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”
Here’s how Hollywood, Nebraska is billed: “Two fortysomething actresses have returned to their once-thriving hometown in rural Nebraska. Jane’s in from Los Angeles 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. 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.”
In summer 2026, Hollywood, Nebraska will get its Virginia premiere Aug. 28-Sept. 13, 2026 by Chamberlayne Actors Theatre in Ashland, VA, near Richmond.
Hollywood, Nebraska was an audience favorite when it had an Equity workshop production at Wyoming Theater Festival in Sheridan, WY, in 2017. Scott Alan Evans directed. It later had a three-theater rolling world premiere in the 2022-23 season at Oak Ridge Playhouse in Tennessee, Lamb Theatre in Sioux City, IA and by Wetumpka Depot Players in Alabama. Audiences have embraced it as bittersweet comfort food akin to Broadway Bound, On Golden Pond and Steel Magnolias.
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.
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. 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.
Michelle Jasso and Elizabeth Howell in Wyoming Theater Festival’s “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 play is 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 also received early development from Off-Broadway’s TACT/The Actors Company Theatre, Actors Theatre of Indiana, Alma Theatre Company in San Francisco, Ground UP Productions in New York City and Music Theatre of Connecticut.
Here’s a note I wrote in the published script of my play:
“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.”
Firehouse Theater Company’s 2026-27 season also includes The Hatmaker’s Wife by Lauren Yee; Chicken & Biscuits by Douglas Lyons; Alabaster by Audrey Cefaly; and Spirit Level by Pam Valentine.
By the way, on June 12 it was announced that the 2025 Firehouse staging of my play Alabama Story received 10 nominations in the Henry Awards, handed out by Denver Theatre Guild.
The company of the Oak Ridge Playhouse world premiere of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”
