Kenneth Jones

In the Great Plains of Nebraska, two actresses of a certain age are returning to their dying hometown. Jane’s in from L.A. to check up on her ailing mother, Alma. Andrea’s back from New York to bury her father. In the quiet of the middle of nowhere — and with two local men, a handsome neighbor and a rough-and-ready laborer, capturing their attention — the old friends navigate feelings about lost parents, thwarted aspirations and what it means to be successful, leading to a showdown between Jane and her homespun mother. A hope-filled, music-kissed, tears-and-laughter love letter to small towns and big dreams, parents and children, the itch to move away, the urge to be creative, and the ache — and joy — of coming home.

HOLLYWOOD, NEBRASKA is available for licensing through 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 Chekhovian 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."

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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."

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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 quirky, heartbreaking and humane conversations between dozens of characters looking for love. Fall in love with a new romantic comedy about first impressions and last chances, drinkers and smokers, impulse and caution, conversation and chemistry. Laugh, cheer and cringe witnessing the universal urge to connect. Sometimes, it only takes ten minutes. (Ask for a perusal copy! Seeking development and production opportunities.)

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Set requirement: Blank stage with a park bench.

Ideal Cast: 8 (4W, 4M) - can be expanded to a large cast (potentially ideal for colleges and community theaters looking for many roles)

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

A two-act play with a prologue, epilogue and 17 separate two-hander (roughly ten-minute) scenes ideally designed for a cast of eight (4W, 4M) performing on/around a park bench. More than 30 characters.

In the eight-actor performance version, members of a diverse, protean company each play 4-5 scenes each.

Currently seeking development and production opportunities for an eight-performer iteration, the tracks of which are:

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

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>Minimum Cast: 8 (4W, 4M)
>Large Cast: An expanded cast of up to 34 people is possible, with author's permission. In theory, a school or community theater could present a large-cast presentation tailored to their best performers.
>A streamlined hybrid intermissionless version is also possible with author's approval.

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

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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 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, TWO HENRYS is a humor-laced drama exploring guilt and grief, perceptions and prejudices, and the urge to find family. Above all, it may be about the bravery of having uncomfortable conversations that lead to change.

Find a perusal copy at NPX or inquire with playwright. Seeking developmental/world premiere opportunities.

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?

“Two Henrys” 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 “Two Henrys” 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 “Two Henrys,” 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.

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, three generations of a family of white restaurateurs gather in their popular restaurant in the Deep South to ponder their reopening. A brainstorming session about repairs reveals ancient layers of racism and bias, unearthing long-buried secrets and laying bare conflicting views on heritage, community and responsibility.

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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’ melodramas 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. Newly revised in 2023. ASK FOR A PERUSAL COPY.

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.