Life
Dickens was born in 1959 [3] in British Columbia and raised in Ontario. [4] His father was a teacher who taught in boarding schools. [4]
For 10 years, he worked in architecture. [1] He was the director for the Kensington Youth Theatre and Employment Skills program in Toronto, using theatre as a training tool for street youth. [1]
Dickens lives in Kingston and has three children. [4]
Playwriting career
In 1994, Dickens turned to playwriting from acting when he developed advanced glaucoma. [4] He was commissioned by Die In Debt Theatre to write a new version of Seneca's Oedipus . [2] After writing the piece and winning a Dora Award, Dickens wanted to further explore the story of Jocasta, Oedipus's mother. He then became fascinated by "the aftermath of Oedipus's downfall." [4] After six years, Dickens had expanded Oedipus to become a trilogy and decided to "dramatize the entire history of Thebes." [4] In total, the series took 15 years to write. [5] To support himself during this time, Dickens taught public speaking to politicians and worked in construction, injuring his hand in an accident. [5]
In May 2009, Dickens's seven-play cycle, City of Wine, debuted at Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille. [6] [7] The play involved 233 student actors, 172 professional actors, and 110 theatre artists [6] and was produced by Nightswimming, an independent theatre company. [5] In its entirety, the play's running time is 12 hours. Robert Kushman, in the National Post , described it as a "dizzyingly ambitious feat of producing and a dizzying achievement." [6]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
