Published by New Jersey Stage
originally published: 02/18/2025
(CAMDEN, NJ) -- South Camden Theatre Company kicks off their 2025 season with Hollywood, Nebraska by Kenneth Jones weekends from February 28 through March 16, 2025. In the play, two forty-something actresses have returned to their dying hometown in the Great Plains of Nebraska.
TV star Jane is coming from Los Angeles to check on her ailing mom, Alma. Stage actress Andrea is 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 former frenemies confront complicated feelings about career, love, and loss, leading to an overdue showdown between Jane and her mother.
Fall in love with a hope-filled, tears-and-laughter comedy about small towns and big dreams, the urge to be creative, the itch to move away, and the ache—and joy—of coming home.
“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.”
Performances take place Friday, February 28 at 8:00pm; Saturday, March 1 at 8:00pm; Sunday, March 2 at 2:00pm; Friday, March 7 at 8:00pm; Saturday, March 8 at 8:00pm; Sunday, March 9 at 2:00pm; Friday, March 14 at 8:00pm; Saturday, March 15 at 8:00pm; and Sunday, March 16 at 2:00pm. Tickets are available for purchase online. South Camden Theatre Company performs at the Waterfront South Theatre (400 Jasper Street) in Camden, New Jersey.
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.”
The cast includes Dawn Varava (Alma), Caity Brown (Jane), Stephen Kreal (Robert), Leah Senseney (Katie), Tanya Morgan (Andrea), and Scott Burkawitz (Lance). The production is directed by Connie Norwood.
Kenneth Jones is a New York City-based playwright, lyricist, librettist and theater advocate. Some of his works include Alabama Story, Tennessee Williams Drank Here, Two Henrys, Ten Minutes on a Bench, It Happened One Christmas, and the musicals Naughty/Nice and Voice of the City.
South Camden Theatre Company is proud to call Camden home. When the company was founded in 2005, performances were held in the basement theatre of the Sacred Heart Church. They are now the proud owners of The Waterfront South Theatre, the first free-standing theatre built for live theatre in Camden in more than 100 years.
The Waterfront South neighborhood is home to a growing arts community. Their arts neighbors now include Camden FireWorks, artist studios and gallery, The Nick Virgilio Writer’s House, Mighty Writers, Bee Still Studios, The Camden Shipyard & Maritime Museum, Camden Boat Works, and the Center For Environmental Transformation, along with The Heart of Camden, and The Sacred Heart Church.
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