We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Larry Dean Harris a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Larry Dean, thanks for joining us today. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.
Fresh out of college, I landed a job at a creative company in Toledo, Ohio, that did 3-D design (events, displays, art exhibits, a little marketing). My boss, a man named Ron McKinney, took a big chance on me. I stayed with him a year, and he taught me everything I know about business (and kindness). Ron came to visit a few years later when I was living in New York. We went to a Broadway show and afterward over desserts at Cafe La Fortuna (John + Yoko’s favorite place, gone sadly) I pitched a silly little idea I had for a show. A year later, I was back in Toledo at my desk. The phone rang. It was Ron. “You know that show you pitched me? Well, I sold it to Owens-Corning for their national sales meeting. You’ve got 3 months. Get writing, kid.” Who does that?!?! The show became a local hit and launched my theatrical career. Here’s where I point out that I had no intention of having a theatrical career – I was a copywriter or so I thought. Ron became my producer, and we’ve stayed friends and worked together for nearly 4 decades now.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I moved to LA in 1997 to further my playwright career. Had some great adventures at the Playwrights Kitchen, formed Playwrights 6 with some talented writer friends and we produced dozens of shows featuring our own work. Then I stumbled into storytelling and was hooked. There were 2 tentpole shows at the time that really did it right: Spark in Santa Monica and Sit N Spin in Hollywood (run by the delightful Maggie Rowe and Anderson Gabrych). We needed a show on the east side, so Strong Words was created (named in honor of the legendary Body Builders Gym in Silver Lake where I found a surprising number of talented performers in the early days). It’s been over 12 years and 92 shows (plus a dozen shows in Palm Springs). We moved to Atwater Village in 2016 at a glorious outdoor courtyard. 2024 is the year we’ll hit show #100. We’ve got great relationships with the Autry Museum and LA Public Library. Our holidays show at the library on December 17 is going to be epic. And we even teach storytelling now to inspire the next wave of artists. Best of all, we have cultivated this amazing community of smart and loving people who show up every month, bundle up in the winter, bake when I ask and cheerfully put their chairs away at the end of the night. They are simply the best. And every once in a while, one of them gets up and shares a story for their first time. And that’s always an electric moment for us.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Just when we were achieving our greatest success in terms of audience size and level of performance, our friend Covid came knocking. So we shifted gears (sorry, can’t say the “p” word) and performed our annual holidayS show (yes, plural – we cover ALL the holidays from Hannukah to New Years) via zoom for the LA Public Library’s LA MADE series online. We had our biggest audience ever (850 story-starved viewers, but it felt hollow not being able to see or hear the crowd). So we bought some plexiglass and built a stage/fortress using an old IKEA Jerker desk. We followed LA Country’s rules for gathering, and we invited a perfect 40 of our most loyal regulars to a unique Strong Words event. We were outdoors. Everyone was required to wear masks and not socialize before or after. We sold tickets in pairs and carefully measured 20 pairs of chairs at least 6 feet apart in the courtyard,. Between every storyteller, I cleaned the microphone and changed its cover. But it was worth it. For 90 minutes in the middle of all that madness, we put on a show. And everyone was so grateful. (and no one got sick).
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Two words: What’s new? I’m always looking for new stories and new storytellers. I want the people who have never climbed on a stage and shared a ridiculously personal moment. I want new and diverse storytellers from all over the city, not just Silver Lake and Atwater Village. I want younger storytellers and musical performers. We have an adventurous audience, so I try to reward them with the unexpected: an opera tenor, a sound bath, an immersive dance experience with naked performers coming out of a pile of dirt, a non-binary troupe of Taiko drummers. Our goal is to always say yes.
Contact Info:
- Website: strongwordslive.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/strongwordslive/
- Youtube: youtube.com/@Playwrights6/videos
Image Credits
Robert Grenader, Johanna Siegmann