Dixon Place

Our first "South" reading at the old Dixon Place on Bowery.
Photo by Norberto Valle

I've heard it said that New York is over, gone, wiped out by Wall Street, real estate, the Web, progress, everything. And it certainly is. But it is also ever here if you know where to look.

About a week after I landed in New York in the late 80's I went to see some friends play music in the East Village. The show was good, but what really stuck was the space. It was on First Street, you came down a few steps and entered a little apartment with a couple of sofas and a bunch of unmatched chairs arranged before the stage, which was the width of the apartment, maybe twelve feet, and about eight feet deep. The back wall of the stage had a door that led to the kitchen/bedroom, with a little window beside it. The window was the bar for pre-show tea and cookies. The audience filled the whole space while the performers set up and chatted, then for the show everybody took their seats to enjoy a lovely, intimate evening with the performers.

After the show I met the proprietress, Ellie Covan, and nervously gave her a newly-minted cassette tape of my songs. In a day or so she called me excitedly, "This is really great music! You've got to come play here!" I didn't even have a band, but her glowing enthusiasm set a fire under me and I put one together with my girlfriend and a drummer pal. Over the years I have done innumerable gigs at Dixon Place as a solo performer as well as accompanist and sound designer. In those primordial days of spirited performance art and unguided struggle, Ellie would open each show with a short tune on accordion, casting forth a vocal performance as notable for it's pluck as it's intonation, and the audience would sing along with "Goodnight Irene" or "Sentimental Journey" as they saw fit.

Dixon Place hosted works-in-progress, high value was placed on inventiveness and the glory of impulse. Each night, two new performances, 20-40 minutes each. If you went a few nights running you might see one pretty good show, one WTF gig and another with gleamings, and maybe even the steady glow, of pure brilliance. Writers reading, songwriters singing, puppeteers hiding behind papier-maché alter egos. One on one, before I ever had a client; no guest, no host, just some people in a hot room packed and intent and fighting a constant climatic battle with air conditioning or steam heat. Close enough to smell the actors, close enough to feel things. This was a place for the honest and the curious as well as those who liked to watch. When I think of theatre at it's most essential, this is the memory that manifests most clearly.

Time passed and stuff happened, maturity finally caught up with me, sort of. The city appears to have become something completely different, neighborhoods that terrified me then are now where the well-off reside, which terrifies me in a different way. People who I thought would always be a quick subway hop away have wafted far off to a misty distance of weird recollection. My own goals and routines have shifted through so many variations over the years that I can make neither head nor tail of any of it at all, nothing is as it was and all has changed irretrievably.

But the Place is still there. A spot to gather, pour forth, express - still downtown, nearby in a neighborhood where cookware is sold and cars drive by too fast, soup lines unwind, street musicians riff and random doors are lit at 1am. Dixon Place left the 1st Street pad years ago and moved to a loft on Bowery. From there it did a stint at a theater on 2nd Avenue, and then returned to a smaller conversion of the loft. Now more than 20 years after I first laid eyes on the institution, Ellie and her amazing crew of conspirators, after a persistent and arduous campaign lasting several years, have succeeded in building a brand-new, several million dollar space on Chrystie Street, and it is inarguably great. It's got an intimate 100 seats, a computer lighting system, a crack tech crew and support staff, and the paint is still drying in places. And, in yet another of their many instances of exquisite judgment, they have given me the fine honor and happy opportunity to do South as part of the opening season.

It's not the supa-tight squeeze the original venue was, but what could be? And I couldn't have fit this show in there anyway. I'm trying to talk Steve, the technical director and lighting designer, into letting us put a bathtub on the stage, and there is no way that would have made it into the old place. Progress!

So as we go about our rehearsals and preparations, Bill, Jenny and I frequently find ourselves asking, how can we use the new space? Where should the seats go, and might we use a platform or a scaffold? Hang up a big sail to project upon or have someone sing from the balcony? It is unusual in New York City that one gets to present in a venue that can take so many forms in which audience and performers may share an evening. Plus, we get the time-honored benefit of hanging with the Dixon Place regulars while we're putting it all together. Life is good!

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