About the Play:

The Distance from Here has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues,, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male Scenes.

The Distance from Here is a full-length drama by Neil LaBute. A couple of American teens with little direction and less hope eventually turn on one another in this stunning portrait of the darker side of American suburbia. The Distance From Here takes a family legacy of neglect and hostility and shows its terrifying impact on the next generation.

The Distance From Here centers on an aimless teenager Darrell and the discord in his family life. His casually dismissive mother doesn't remember his childhood and her stepdaughter – a teenage single mother with an ever-wailing baby – wants to become involved sexually with him, and his mother's boyfriend is sleeping with his stepsister. With little to occupy their time other than finding a decent place to hang out – the zoo, the mall, the school parking lot – Darrell and his friend Tim meander aimlessly through life in their rage-filled, yet passionless world. When Darrell's suspicion about the faithlessness of his on-again, off-again girlfriend is confirmed and Tim moves to defend her, there is nothing to brake their momentum as all three speed toward astonishing cruelty and disaster.

The Distance From Here premiered in 2002 at the Almeida Theatre in London. The US premiere was in 2004 by by Manhattan Class Company (MCC) at the Duke Theatre in New York City and the West Coast premiere was by the Los Angeles Theater Ensemble at the Promenade Playhouse in 2005. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 5 male

What people say:

"LaBute, in his most ambitious and best play to date, gets inside the emptiness of American culture, the Masquerade and the evil of neglect. The Distance from Here, it seems to me, is a new title to be added to the short list of important contemporary plays." — The New Yorker

"LaBute's skill, and the shortness of the scenes, are compelling...[his] excellent writing generates an exact depiction of empty soulless, thoughtless lives." — Times Literary Supplement

"..LaBute knows how to tighten the screws of plot. ...this play treads a fine line between shocking you out of your received liberal complacencies and just making you feel morally superior to these adroitly pinned-down anthropological specimens." — Independent

About the Playwright:

Neil LaBute is an award-winning American playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. His plays include bash, Reasons to be Pretty (Tony Award nominated for best play), In a Forest, Dark and Deep, and Reasons to be Happy. His films include In the Company of Men (New York Critics' Circle Award for Best First Feature and the Filmmaker Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival), Your Friends and Neighbors, Nurse Betty, Possession, The Shape of Things, Some Velvet Morning, and Dirty Weekend. He is a 2013 recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.