Jane Cox, professor of music, grew up in Iowa on land that has been in her family since 1875. Growing up, she was drawn to the Midwest by tales of what life was like for her ancestors.

Her family was a great source of information and inspiration for the one-woman play “The Promised Land,” which she will perform this weekend.

“The Promised Land” is set in the 1880s and presents Cox as Sarah, a typical, married woman from Nebraska.

“[My] family on both sides settled in Iowa,” Cox says. “Growing up, I heard stories of what life was like then.”

Cox says because of this, she developed a strong sense of stewardship toward the land that her family owned.

“The land became important enough to be a family member,” Cox says. “The land had so much history on it.”

“The Promised Land” isn’t the first solo effort for Cox. She had previously starred in a show about Carrie Chapman Catt, a graduate of Iowa State in 1880, the only woman graduate in a class 18 students.

Cox says she wanted to choose a woman for the play that was more representative of the average woman of the 1880s.

“I wanted the kind of woman who wasn’t as famous as the other women I’d written about,” Cox says.

“I wanted a one-woman show about the kind of woman who was a pioneer of the 1880s Midwest.

“I wanted to show what life was like for the average person who endured a great deal.”

Although the story takes place in Nebraska, the story is universal for the Midwest.

Cox says much of her information in writing the play came straight from sources in Nebraska.

“I did do a lot of research from books and papers from Nebraska and was helped by the Nebraska Historical Association,” she says.

Cox says the title of the play is properly chosen because of how pioneers saw and the characters see opportunities in the land they inhabit.

“Sarah and James [her husband], starting out, they see land as the promised land,” Cox says.

“A lot of immigrants to the U.S. and a lot of people who settled on land in this country a hundred years ago saw this as the promised land.”