Kenneth Jones

A college football star is one bad grade away from losing everything — his scholarship, his endorsements, even his shot at the NFL. The problem? He’s flunking a class he never took seriously: Modern Drama. When he’s paired with a bookish theater major as a last-chance tutor, an unexpected intimacy rewrites the carefully planned playbooks of both their lives. Bridging the worlds of sports and the arts, "Hut, Hut, Hike" is a sexy, brutal and bittersweet coming-of-age story about ambition, intimacy and fumbling your way toward an identity you can live with.
*
A 2026 O'Neill NPC Finalist!
*
From the author: A play about college, innocence, corruption, ambition, sex, intimacy, trauma, healing, sports, theater, attraction, identity, success, and which path is the right one.

Two fortysomething actresses have returned to their once-thriving hometown in rural Nebraska. Jane’s 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.

HOLLYWOOD, NEBRASKA is available for licensing through Concord Theatricals/Dramatists Play Service. See link below. The licensing package includes sounds files and/or sheet music for producers who don't have a music department. (Piano music can be played live if the cast has that skill set.)

From the Playwright: Unlike my plays TWO HENRYS, ALABAMA STORY, TENNESSEE WILLIAMS DRANK HERE and CIRCA 1976, this one doesn’t have threads of social justice woven into it. It's a sadness-streaked family comedy about show people looking in the mirror and trying to figure out who they are in a time of personal crossroads. One audience member at a talkback asked, "What's at stake for the main character, Jane?" My answer was, "Everything!" An L.A. actress in her forties is often an invisible creature, and Jane is trying to figure out where she fits in the world, professionally, personally, romantically. The past and present collide in her hometown, a place where "dying" things are constantly referenced. It's ultimately a hope-filled play about living — and what it means to live a "creative life."

*

A theatergoer at a reading of the play Off-Broadway billed it as ON GOLDEN POND, BROADWAY BOUND & STEEL MAGNOLIAS combined. "I wanna call my mom," she said of the bittersweet comedy about parents and children. That sounds about right to me. It's also sexy and funny and warm. Comfort food that makes you think, to mix a metaphor.

A controversial children’s book about a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit stirs the passions of a segregationist State Senator and a no-nonsense State Librarian in 1959 Montgomery, Alabama. Meanwhile, the reunion of two childhood friends — an African-American man and a woman of white privilege — provides a private counterpoint to the public events swirling in the state capital. Political foes, star-crossed lovers, and one feisty children’s author inhabit the same page in a Deep South of the imagination that brims with humor, heartbreak and hope.

A play about censorship, Civil Rights and American character. Inspired by true events. By fall 2024, it will have been seen in more than 60 productions around the U.S.

It is published by Dramatists Play Service, which handles its licensing.

Based on true events and mixing fact and fiction, this love letter to reading — a finalist in the 2014 National Playwrights Conference of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center and a nominee for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award — leaps from pages of history, exploring the moving story that earned librarian Emily Reed international headlines when she defended "The Rabbits' Wedding," a picture book by Garth Williams, best known for his artwork for "Little House on the Prairie" and "Charlotte's Web."

*

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote, “At a time when intolerance is on the upswing and empathy is under siege, ALABAMA STORY is just the play we need.”

A dating app called Ten Minutes On a Bench is the latest match-making craze, placing singles on a park bench to find common ground. The clock is ticking, but there’s no limit to the variety of heartfelt and humane conversations between dozens of characters looking for romance. Fall head over heels in love with a new speed-dating vignette comedy about first impressions, last chances, impulse and caution, conversation and chemistry. Laugh, cheer and cringe witnessing the universal urge to connect. Sometimes, it only takes ten minutes.

(This is a licensable property through the author, who is seeking an Equity world premiere following several ongoing non-Equity and college bookings. No part of the perusal copy can be performed without permission from the author and a signed license agreement.)

*
“Ten Minutes On a Bench” is a flexibly-sized “vignette” comedy comprised of a Prologue, 17 unrelated two-hander scenes, and an Epilogue. The play has 35 speaking roles.

The setting is a park bench.

This collection was first envisioned as a two-act play for a protean cast of 8 performers (4W, 4M) who double and triple to create dozens of characters ranging in age from 20s to 70s. (It has also been performed with 6-12 actors.) Its original intent was to be a playful, theatrical showcase for the skills of a versatile, charismatic (small-ish) ensemble. This intimate ensemble idea is the preferred format for professional licensing.

However —

The play can be modified to feature an expanded cast of up to 35 actors performing the original 17 scenes in two acts — or fewer scenes (think 12) without an intermission. The selection and order of scenes is determined by the producer/director but guided by the order suggested by the author in the script below. (Yes, you can pick and choose, but there is some intention to the order.) These allowable modifications are available to professional, amateur, high school and college producers. No content within scenes may be altered. No added material is allowed.

All fully staged presentations must utilize the Prologue and Epilogue, the content of which requires slight adjustment depending on which scenes are used — the Prologue mentions character names in the scenes to come, and the Epilogue reflects back on moments in the play. “Fully staged” is to be interpreted as off-book, designed productions rather than scene study, readers theatre, student/amateur showcase, etc. In those minimally-realized cases, the set up of the world can be conveyed in the playbill or by other means.

Presentation of any material — even if you’re offering only five scenes in a format called, say, “Scenes From 'Ten Minutes On a Bench,'” for example — requires a license fee and signed license agreement.

Perfect fit for a company looking for humane comedies in the tradition of Neil Simon and ”Almost, Maine.”

The tracks of an eight-performer iteration look like this:

ACTOR 1 & ACTRESS 1: Ages 20s-30s
ACTOR 2 & ACTRESS 2: Ages 20s-40s
ACTOR 3 & ACTRESS 3: Ages 40s-50s
ACTOR 4 & ACTRESS 4: Ages 60s-70s

The cast should represent a wide range of ages, body types, abilities, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities and genders.

*

There is an epidemic of loneliness in the human race. Nature eventually urges us to find contact, chemistry and companionship with others. In the early 21st century, some people seek it through technology. The dating service called Ten Minutes On a Bench is not a hookup app for sex; its target is relationship-minded people who want a conversation first. Communication, especially when there’s a ticking clock, is rarely straightforward. Even when you think you’re prepared for the briefest chat, there are surprising sharp turns, dead ends, detours and derailments. This play is a pulse-taking of all kinds of people ready (or not) for relationships. At great risk, they put themselves out in the world in an effort to cure our great epidemic. If a lasting connection doesn’t result, maybe the memory of a misfired exchange or an amiable moment — of grace, kindness, hurt, surprise and laughter — will sustain and inspire them to do better next time, keep looking, keep reaching and keep hoping until they’re no longer alone.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, members of the Hardy family gather to fix the damage to their world-famous Mississippi restaurant. When progressive niece Samantha blows into town with audacious ideas about the future, she further shakes the foundation of the beloved institution. Buried secrets, dubious family mythology and bad behavior are all on the table, threatening the status quo of three generations of white, Deep South restaurateurs. A toothsome, booze-soaked, three-act drama about heritage, legacy, community and responsibility.

*
One set. Three acts. Six characters. Darkly comic, ruminative, funny, heartbreaking and hopeful, the play deals specifically with white characters' narcissism and their culpability in systemic racism. Yes, it's a booze-kissed reunion that moves from morning to evening and (purposely) is one of those "long-buried-secrets-are-revealed" plays. It's an attempt at an ensemble family play that echoes the heat and chew of Tennessee Williams' or Eugene O'Neill's multi-act family dramas without becoming camp or Southern gothic. While the restaurant they work in reveals itself as an allegory for America, the play wants to be about finding family — and preserving family by examining it and reinventing it. It's not an "issue" play or a lecture, it's a play about a family desperately composting pieces of its own history.

In the dead of winter, Henry flies from New York to Florida to offer condolences at the funeral of his late partner’s father, a man he never knew. But as the booze flows at the wake, are the surviving widow, Constance, and her grown daughter, Amy, ready to raise a glass to the unexpected guest? Set in 2012, somewhere between the dusk of the worst days of the AIDS crisis and the dawn of marriage equality, WHY WE GO TO FLORIDA is a humor-laced drama exploring guilt and grief, perceptions and prejudices, show tunes, silence and survival. And, of course, the urge to find family.

Find a perusal copy at NPX or inquire with playwright. I'm seeking developmental/world premiere opportunities.

Under the title TWO HENRYS, this play was a two-time semi-finalist in the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. The latest 2025 draft is the most up-to-date script, responding to recent and continuing shifts in America’s relationship with the LGBTQ community. (Although, technically, the play is a period piece set in 2012.) The play received an Equity reading in Florida Repertory Theatre's PlayLab Festival of New Works in May 2025.

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT
Constance has just lost her husband, Mike, after 60 years of marriage. But his sudden death isn’t the only grief inside her as she prepares for his wake at the southwest Florida home that they shared. The sting of losing her son, Henry, to HIV/AIDS 15 years earlier is aroused again with the arrival of a stranger at her home: Henry’s partner, also named Henry, has come to express his condolences — and to make a connection with the mother-in-law he never knew, in a place where he was not previously welcomed. Constance’s daughter, Amy, emboldened by alcohol and threatened by Henry’s appearance, shares memories of her brother but also questions the motives of the outsider, even as she hides a secret about her own family. Henry’s audacious visit is met with an equally audacious invitation. Constance, a drinker herself, asks him to stay the night in the guest room — Henry’s old room — setting the stage for an overdue confrontation about the late Henry’s life and death, the surviving Henry’s guilt and goals, and the staunchly conservative family’s role in the decline of their golden child. The play’s poolside conversations — dark, funny, humane, honest, touching — address prejudices and perceptions, mirroring “coming out” exchanges that still go on today. But following the decades-long delay of addressing the realities of their family tree, is hope still possible for a mother who needs a son, a son who needs a mother and a sister who seems to only need a drink?

“Why We Go to Florida” is the result of a lot of things that I’ve experienced or heard over the years on the subject of LGBTQ people coming out of the closet. For some, “coming out” might seem like an almost quaint topic, in the age of marriage equality, but the struggle is real for millions of people who grow up in communities that are intolerant and downright hostile about anything that is “different.” The act of telling the truth about the experience of your identity is still a thing. I became interested in a fresh take on the coming-out ritual, through the lens of middle-aged and senior people: I envisioned something about an aging mother who never had “the talk” with her gay son — and never would because he died of illness before HIV/AIDS was treatable. I also knew that I wanted to write a comedy. Like my play “Alabama Story,” I built “Why We Go to Florida” on the foundation of clear opposites: conservative and liberal, gay and straight, brother and sister, parent and child, wellness and illness, spiritual and secular, grief and acceptance, sobriety and addiction, funerals and weddings, silence and communication, tears and laughter. At an earlier reading of the play in Salt Lake City, a gay man and his parents approached me with tears in their eyes. The father said, “We sure have lived some of this story.” I hope you come to fall in love with what’s both specific and universal about my play, and that maybe it inspires communication where before there was only silence.

This play is a time capsule, a period piece, a remembrance of attitudes, perceptions and prejudices that existed — and still exist. Most everything spoken in the play is based on words spoken directly to me or to my LGBTQ+ friends. This is about silence — and the talk a son and a mother never got to have. They are finally having the talk now, but not with their blood family. This is how the conversation might have gone with their respective family had timing and circumstance allowed it.

As long as there are forces shoving people into the darkness, coming out stories will be relevant, necessary and alive. And if you think we’re beyond these stories, you only have to look at the alarming attempted suicide statistics in the LGBTQ+ community, particularly among queer youth.

It’s July 4, 2016, and alumni of Evergreen Elementary School’s class of 1976 have gathered for the 40th anniversary of their graduation from sixth grade. A handful of former classmates — a jock, an artist, a cheerleader, a brain and an overachiever, all in their early fifties — find themselves in their old music room, in a suburban school that has been converted to a senior citizens’ community center. Memories of past teachers, tensions and traumas are conjured like half-remembered songs. The present concerns of a divided America, in which Donald Trump is battling Hillary Clinton, dovetail with the anxieties of the classmates’ past to spark an unforgettable swing state reunion. The gathering — complete with the surprise appearance of a fury-filled, truth-telling teacher — calls into question the Spirit of 76. Inspired by true events, a humor-laced ensemble drama that will leave you shaken and looking back at your past and forward to a clearer view of the people in your life.

Ask for a free perusal copy.

Four adult actors play a community of twenty or so misfit kids in the darkly comic musical that brings to life letters to Santa Claus. An original contemporary score is swirled with pastiche to create a unique new musical comedy that blends the heart of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" with the caustic humor of "Avenue Q" and the theatricality of "Spelling Bee."

A perfect antidote to "A Christmas Carol" fatigue, it's suitable as a cabaret-style show (with one piano and four actors) but rich enough to feel at home in a theatre. Built for four triple threats, it would also support cast expansion as a possible to showcase for a wide larger group of performers (hello, universities!). Profane. Satiric. Wildly melodic. Not for kids. Conceived by BMI Workshop alumni collaborators Gerald Stockstill (composer) and Kenneth Jones (lyricist), it was a finalist in the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Festival of New Musicals. Hear music samples at www.naughtynicethemusical.com.