Nebraska’s Broadway legacy long, strong, more accessible

Nebraska’s Broadway legacy is far from a monolith. The state has produced a gallery of talents who’ve made it there, including some who have become household names.

The list includes composer Ann Ronell, actor-singer-dancers Fred and Adele Astaire, actors Henry Fonda, Dorothy McGuire, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Lenka Peterson, Sandy Dennis, and actor-singers Julie Wilson and Swoosie Kurtz. 

Nebraskans keep making their way to New York, up to and including six-time Tony Award-winning producer Phil Kenny, actor-singers Yolonda Ross, Andrew Rannells, John Lloyd Young, Q. Smith, Kevyn Morrow, Merle Dandridge and Stephanie Kurtzuba. Writer Amber Ruffin is all the rage there now. Even film-TV actress Gabrielle Union is producing on Broadway. 

Ross, Smith, Morrow, Dandridge, Ruffin, Union, along with Sojourner Brown, Nadia Ra’Shaun, Lauren Johnson and Sierra Lancaster, are among a growing community of diverse talents from Nebraska making noise in New York and beyond.

With the exception of Fonda and McGuire coming back to perform and fundraise for the place that launched their theater careers, the Omaha Community Playhouse, earlier generations of Nebraskans on Broadway rarely returned home. 

That’s changed with the new crop of homegrown artists there. Smith, Morrow and Mercer have led the come-back-to-give-back charge by collaborating as teaching artists.

Sasha Dobson, Lied Center education outreach coordinator and Triple Threat Intensive director, often utilizes Broadway artists with Nebraska ties.

Besides Smith, teaching faculty have included Katie Pohlman, currently a swing in “Aladdin,” Sam Hartley, a standby for “Gutenberg!,” and actor Con O’Shea-Creal.

Others with Broadway experience who’ve given back in state include: dancer Stephanie Chase, a former Rockette and veteran of a “Can, Can” revival, returned to run her own dance studio in Lincoln; Kate Moore taught a masterclass at the Lied when part of the “Into the Woods” national tour; Emily Kinney, who held a prominent role in TV’s “The Walking Dead,” taught at her alma mater, Nebraska Wesleyan; Kally Duling, an actor on stage and screen,  has led masterclasses at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Playwright and director Mary Alice Zimmerman, who won the Tony and other awards for “Metamorphoses,” came back to lecture and do workshops related to her adaptation of “The Odyssey.”

Off-Broadway playwright Rob Urbinati led a Benson Theatre workshop. Great Plains Theatre Commons brought native son New York-based playwrights Don Nguyen and Noah Diaz to participate in its New Play Conference. GPTC brought Nebraskan Wai Yim, a Chicago theater fixture, to direct. 

Nebraska Theatre Caravan and Omaha Community Playhouse alum Norbert Leo Butz, a two-time Tony winner, will perform his “Broadway, My Way” one-man revue on Feb. 1. OCP alum and Tony Award-winner John Lloyd Young, an Omaha native, will headline OCP’s April 5 Century Gala. (Correction: This story has been corrected to note John Lloyd Young is a Tony Award-winner.)

With each intersection, the road from here to there and back again shortens, which means Nebraska and New York are not as far apart as they first appear.