Drew Larimore, a playwright from Kentucky, is bringing his EVVY Award winning “Best Dramatic Script,” TOUCH, to L.A this weekend. Larimore wrote his first play when he was in the 3rd grade and hasn’t stopped since.

His passion for writing and list of accomplishments is an inspiration for many of us. He is the creator of the Boston-based playwrights group The Red Hand Collective and a member of Circle East Theatre Company in New York. His ten-minute play THE QUINTESSENTIAL RAPPORT was a finalist in the 2002 National Ten-Minute Play Competition. He has three plays currently in production in Melbourne, Sydney, Boston, and Hollywood.

After traveling over much of the world and participating in many amazing productions, he had a chance to speak with LA.CityZine and tell us a little about himself and his play TOUCH.

This Saturday, Drew will be doing a reading of his new work TOUCH at WINTERFEST. There is detailed information on the event following the interview.

CityZine: Could you give us a brief description of what the play is about?

Drew Larimore: TOUCH takes place in the heart of Appalachia and is a story about two brothers, Rover and Teeter, who have run away from home and come across an abandoned handgun in the forest. Teeter dies the night they come across the gun, and from that point forwards the play revolves around Rover overcoming his younger brother’s death. Still living in the forest several years later, Rover encounters the forest’s overseer, Havana, and the two strike up an unexpected romance when she takes him back to her home, where her eccentric Aunt Nadene lives. Struggling to overcome the events that have taken place, all four characters in TOUCH (including Teeter) reach a pivotal point in their lives where they must make the active choice to move forward.

What was the inspiration for this play?

TOUCH originally began as a one-act play titled STANDING WITH BLACKNESS (which was recently produced in Australia) about a mentally disabled young man shooting his best friend. STANDING WITH BLACKNESS, too, took place in Appalachia, and at the time that I wrote it - God, it must have been four or five years ago when I was living in The Netherlands - I was taken with the language a playwright can toy with when dealing with the Appalachian dialect. I also wanted to explore America’s bizarre and at times, erotic relationship with guns.

Flash forward several years later, I was living in Boston and was walking home from the subway with a good friend and the story of TOUCH, inspired by some of the ideas in the previously written one-act, suddenly came to me. I began retelling it to her as I saw it in my mind, and the look of fascination in her eyes mixed with sadness really struck me. By the time I had finished telling her the story, she had stopped walking and stood there on a snowy night, stunned.

From that point forth I knew TOUCH needed to be written. I knew this play could affect people the way it affected my friend in Boston that night.

Why did you find the need to switch the title?

All four characters are constantly yearning for human contact surrounded in the isolated world they live. They are hungry for love - hungry for one another - and struggle deeply attempting to convey this.

Why did you choose to have “Touch” take place in the Appalachians?

All the characters in TOUCH are deeply connected to their world around them. This was an element of Appalachian people I wanted to convey, as all four characters not only understand the earth, but seemed to have developed a love/hate relationship with it. The land around them almost plays a fifth character in that it’s a place preventing them from getting what they want yet rooted deeply in the core of their being.

Are any of the events in the play based off of real events in your life?

I can assure you I didn’t shoot my brother in the woods and he is alive and well. None of the events have actually any autobiographical significance in my life, but I think with so many writers we come through in one way or another through various ways. Nadene’s monologue about wanting to run away at the end of Act II really strikes a chord with me in terms of her longing for something different, something vibrant - I think we’ve all felt that. I think Teeter, while he is a dead character essentially, conveys a lot of my thoughts about death and the process of acceptance that occurs in the afterlife. So none of it is factually true in terms of events or character, but I relate to all four characters and the journeys they take in very profound ways.

How long did it take to complete this play?

I started it about two and a half years ago. It was really slow in the beginning, because I wasn’t sure where it all was going - as is the case with most plays I write. It had a reading in Boston when I was living there with the theatre company I started, and then I came out here to LA and it had a very helpful reading with ALAP at the Met Theatre last May, and with The Blank Theatre in their Living Room Series last September. Isabel Storey at Storey Productions has since graciously taken it under her wing after being affected by its reading at the Met. I often joke with Isabel that it’s so funny a play about Appalachia is making the rounds in a city like Los Angeles and not a place like North Carolina!

You seem to move around a lot, how has traveling effected your writing?

So much! I mean, I’m originally form Kentucky and have a long ancestry of family there, so I think a need to bring forth three dimensional, college educated, environmentally aware and spiritually reflective people from the Appalachian region is a very important for me on a personal level. I traveled to Iceland several years ago and wrote a play about it upon returning, OUT OF ASKJA - so the more I travel the more I realize the idea of place and how it effects the person really comes through in my work. I also am a very nomadic person and as of late, don’t stay in one spot for more than a few years. I think my love of language and dialects also comes through with this, too - as the Appalachian and Icelandic accent is a lot of fun to play with on stage!

When writing the play do you have a face or a particular actor in mind for your characters?

I find having a face in mind - usually an intangible celebrity, someone who would be “so perfect” for the role in an ideal world, actually helps. That way, if you get offtrack and begin to lose sight of these people you’re writing, you have a reference point to come back to. I think with TOUCH alone, I’ve pictured Kathy Bates and Daniel Radcliffe many times while exploring the characters of Rover and Nadene.

Could you see yourself playing a character in one of your plays?

Oh my God no. That would be insane. That’s like your worst nightmare of being in front of your class naked. I can’t even think about it.

Often times writers are protective over their work. How do you define the line between the necessary creative control of the Director and your vision while writing the play? Do you relinquish creative control to the Director to interpret your words or are you pretty flexible?

I’ve been extremely lucky to encounter some really fantastic directors while here in LA. Casey Stangl, who is directing this reading with EST-LA’s Winterfest, is really wonderful about protecting me as a playwright in the rehearsal process - from actors, from audience members, etc… The difference between plays and screenplays (and I can say this because a screenplay I wrote was shot last summer and it was a first for me) is that plays are ultimately literature, whereas screenplays are not. So with literature one pays homage to the writer and most theatre directors understand this, whereas in film, there are so many other technological elements that are needed to make the film work that the writer is such a small piece of the puzzle.

That’s not to say there aren’t important sound designers and lighting designers contributing to great plays, but at the end of the day plays are literature and people remember that. So in terms of directors, as long as this is understood I’m happy to let go of the reigns so the director and actors can mold it into something that can be performed. A play will never grow if it’s in the hands of a rigid playwright.

With that said, I think playwrights have to be very careful when working with a director. There are some theatre directors, believe it or not, who don’t understand all of this and bypass the playwright on a lot of important decisions. I’ve been fortunate to work with Casey on numerous projects, a very talented LA director named Patrick Varon and am embarking on a new project with Adam Kinsinger at The Blank next month - so I’m spoiled.

What gives you more satisfaction and why: the completion of the play or hearing it read aloud?

Well, it’s funny, because whenever I complete a play I always print it, bind it, and keep it near me at all times. I used to actually sleep with each manuscript, as in place it beside me in bed - but my friends said that was creepy so I now keep it at my bedside so when I wake up each morning I can see what I’ve accomplished. That’s important for a writer, to see what has been written physically - a title page, character page, a “copyright” in the bottom left hand corner. I find that usually lasts a day or two, reveling in that it’s actually “finished” - or so you tell yourself. Then you begin the rewrites but that time of feeling proud and accomplished is important.

Really, though, I think hearing a play is like nothing else, because you get to share it with the world in a physical space. You get to see people’s expressions when a line hits them particularly hard, you get to work with actors in such an intimate way - and of course, there’s always a very inexplicable bond you end up sharing with your director - someone who’s taken time and effort to help you shape something so personal yet public. That’s why I write plays and not fiction, because I love sharing my insights about the world and about human nature with people onstage. Just with TOUCH alone, the ideas of moving on from and accepting death - finding love when you least expect it - arising out of a lifetime of stagnation - it resonates with people who’ve heard it, and that’s a feeling like nothing else for me, a reminder that while writing is at times a very lonely process, it’s anything but lonely in the end because people all over the world relate to these characters you’ve thought up. It’s why I’m here, quite frankly - it’s why I’m living on this earth, to partake in a lifetime of this really amazing learning process that I get to share with so many.

After this weekend, will there be another reading or showcase of this piece?

I’m not sure - the more I work as playwright the more I realize there is no cap for staged readings! TOUCH has received three so far this year and while I don’t expect another any time soon, you never know. Really, the next step with this play is production - and I can say that confidently now that the script is really working.

TOUCH is part of WINTERFEST, Ensemble-Studio Theatre’s annual festival of new play. For a full schedule of events check out their website.

TOUCH will be read this Saturday, May 1, 2008 at 8:00pm

For reservations please call 213-368-9552.

Located at Miles Memorial Playhouse
1130 Lincoln Blvd. Santa Monica - Map

Parking: Plenty of Street parking as well as free parking at 808 Wilshire Blvd.

Photo by Zoe Grossman

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