SEAN DIXON
A PEOPLE'S PLAYWRIGHT

By Christopher DiRaddo

“I like the idea of Shakespeare writing for everyone who came to his theatre,” says playwright Sean Dixon of his first master. “I write to please myself but I also hope to please a broader audience.”
 
Dixon considers himself to be a populist writer. “What I believe to be the most important thing about theatre is the emphasis that a group of people have crowded together to create an audience and that there are people in front of them and that it’s live,” he says.

Dixon is currently the playwright-out-of-residence for Victoria’s Skam Theatre, a company whose mandate is to present provocative and innovative work that is “never boring”. Among the original locales where this troupe have staged their work include courtyards, loading docks, underneath bridges and the front seat of a car (the audience sat in the back). “One of the reasons I like to do theatre outdoors is because it really emphasizes the feeling that you’re all there together.”
 
Skam have produced three of Dixon’s plays. He first met the troupe in 1998 when they wanted to present one of his plays, District of Centuries, outdoors for the first time. “I liked the wit and the economy with which they approached the environment. When the elements are against you and you don’t have any money and you turn those limitations into strengths, it is really delightful because you’re conquering the things that are standing against you.”
 
Dixon proceeded to write a play for Skam entitled Billy Nothin’ which was also presented outdoors and really illustrated to him what it was about outdoor theatre that was so unique. “The play asks the audience to follow it into some strange places like up into the sky and then take a step out of New York, and suddenly find themselves in British Columbia. Also these elliptical things get said and take place and I find, because the play is in this populist outdoor environment, people are very welcoming of that kind of technique. They’re more open to them, and even if there are elements of it that they don’t understand, they seem to forgive it anyway.”

“One of the reasons I like to do theatre outdoors is because it really emphasizes the feeling that you’re all there together.”
 
When writing, Dixon concedes that he tries not to think too much about his audience. “When I do that I feel like my writing fails me a little bit. The reason why I click so well with Amiel (Gladstone, of Skam) as a director is that he helps me to clarify my intent so people will understand it better and he helps me find broader audiences.”
 
“I think the best way to find out what your audience wants is to talk to them,” he says. “I haven’t really done that because I have always had a vision of what I want theatre to be and it’s a little bit different.”
 
Dixon loves the fact that site specific theatre is growing and believes that it is a good way to seek out new audiences. “You can bring the theatre to them. It is an intrinsic way to do it because people can just walk into a park and suddenly there you are.”
 
But he believes that connection with the audience doesn’t just happen in non-traditional settings. “The best theatre is always a two-way communication, even if you’re sitting in the dark with a group of people in a theatre,” he says. “It’s possible that doing theatre outdoors has opened me up to that notion but it really doesn’t make a difference because in a great piece of theatre, somebody might be sitting in the dark sobbing uncontrollably and everybody around them can hear it. Or the people on the stage can hear the audience laughing uproariously and the walls really contain that roar so the response of the audience is heightened.”
 
“What we really want is to create that community with the audience. That’s what everybody wants.”

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