The family that (makes) plays together, stays together, and Lisa Dixon wouldn’t have it any other way.
As the director of 291, the second production of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2025-26 season, Dixon is not only bringing to the Guild Hall stage an original work written in 2014 by her daughter Jade O’Keeffe, she’s also benefiting from the involvement of her brother Beau, an accomplished playwright, actor, and musician who is doing double duty as the play’s composer and sound designer.
Opening Saturday, November 1 at the Guild’s Rogers Street venue in East City, 291 invites the audience into the world of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. One of modern art’s most iconic couples — she an American modernist painter and draftswoman and he an American photographer and modern art promoter — their relationship in was characterized by the more than 5,000 handwritten letters they exchanged over three decades from 1915 to 1946.
Billed as “a lyrical portrait of love, art and letters that defined a generation,” 291 captures both the passion and complexity of their relationship, and the blending of Stieglitz’s revolutionary photography with O’Keeffe’s groundbreaking abstract expressionism. The result is a celebration of artistic collaboration and a meditation on the lost art of letter writing.
“She knew of Alfred Stieglitz because she studied art,” says Dixon of Georgia O’Keeffe.
“One of her colleagues, a student, brought her charcoal drawings to his attention. He saw (in her art) what he saw in Picasso and a lot of European artists, and invited her to come to the gallery. That’s when they became lovers. In one of his letters, he said he fell in love with her when he saw her drawings. That’s a bit of a red flag. What did he fall in love with? But they were they were very much in love and they had a long, beautiful relationship.”
“When she did leave him, it was because he was with another woman. He probably was a few times — from the script we can see that — but she was also with other people. I think they are special people in that they couldn’t ride that kind of dogma life that a lot of us have, where you abstain and you stay truthful. There was too much going on in their brains. She saw colours with music. There was a lot going on with both of them that I think it was OK, but it must have been a real tough time. The (play’s) opening line is ‘Love is a complicated beauty.'”
Working with a story written by her daughter, admits Dixon, presented an added challenge.
“I knew she wasn’t going to be 100 per cent happy with me doing this,” says Dixon, adding “It’s her baby. She knew I would take it down a route that maybe she wasn’t happy with, but she has to learn to let go. This is a teachable moment. This is me learning more about her.”
“We did a big table read with the creative team,” Dixon recalls. “One scene was really bothering me … I wanted to take it a bit further. It took me awhile to figure out how to ask her, but I asked her rewrite a whole scene. I told her why; how I wanted to pivot the story through a scene with the same text, but create a different vision. She did (the rewrite), and it was so smart the way she rewrote it. She got it. That’s pretty amazing.”
Dixon says her brother Beau also helped provide his niece with some creative direction.
“He sat with her and said ‘We need more movement. Your text is good, but it’s not going to pop.’ She was OK (with it). She learned that it’s OK to change something and then step back.”
With the cast comprised of just two actors — O’Keeffe is portrayed by Gayle Fraser and Stieglitz is played by David Russell — it would seem the task of directing is made easier. Actually, says Dixon, that task is more of a challenge.
“If there are only two people on stage, it’s because something happened between them,” she says, adding “Even if we put them in separate spaces, there’s a connection.”
“(Fraser and Russell) are both very strong and very experienced, so they’ve been able to get the nuance of Georgia and Alfred. They’re doing a lot of work being characters that are in love, but it’s complicated. We worked on ‘OK, you’re not going to be Georgia O’Keeffe; you’re not going to be Alfred Stieglitz. That’s going to be hard.’ Instead, what are the realities in the text that show who each person is? Give me some proof in this text or that text.”
“As a director, that’s how I work — ‘Stop. What did you just say?’ and what does that tell me about the behaviour of the next three lines? You can talk scene study of the characters as much as you want, but eventually (you have to decide) how do they move? What do they do with their hands?”
On a more personal level, Dixon is thrilled to be back in a theatre environment as a director. She is best known to locals for having run the popular Black Honey cafe, bakery, and catering business in downtown Peterborough for 18 years, before selling the business in December 2023.
“When I sold Black Honey, Bea Quarrie — who’s very involved with the Guild — approached me and said ‘Do you want to get back in theatre?'” recounts Dixon.
“I did a bit of stage acting for some readings. It really felt good. Jade’s play was the source of a reading for the Guild years ago — a couple of people were walking around with her script. After I was assistant director for a play, more than one person suggested I submit it to the Guild’s play selection committee.”
“I had to ask Jade. She hesitated, but one of the reasons I knew it would be special to do is (because) the story is layered. She wrote it so well that it’s difficult to follow without it being performed. I liked that as a challenge. I thought, ‘If I’m going to get into directing, why not do it with something that difficult to do but also very meaningful to me?’ I’m just so proud of her writing. It’s stunning.”
When Dixon took on the role of director for 291, she had no idea just how cathartic the experience would prove to be.
On October 12, her father, Reverend Canon Blair Dixon, died at age 89. Since his passing, Lisa, Beau, and their sibling Lance have been dealing with their grief. Meanwhile, the clock has been ticking toward opening night for 291, with much still to be fine-tuned.
“You can’t stop — you have to keep going,” Dixon reflects. “When my mother was dying, I had two weddings (to cater) every weekend that June. They needed me. I had to go to the weddings and then I would run off and sit with my mom. One thing I remember, and it’s the same now, I couldn’t wait to get back to work because there was a feeling of family.”
“The Theatre Guild has a really tight concept of protocol. If you need something, it’s there. If you can’t find it, you know who to call. So not being able to be here for a couple of rehearsals wasn’t a problem.”
Now, like the director of any theatrical production, Dixon hopes those who see 291 take something away from the experience.
“What were they doing when she painted? What were they doing when he took a photo like that? They felt something so intense, they had to capture it. They weren’t worried about you as a viewer.”
“I really want that to happen for the audience member. I want you to understand what they were feeling — why that feeling was so intense that they had to project it.”
291 is produced by Kym Hyde and stage managed by Marilyn Robinson, with lighting design by Don White and set design by David Geene.
The play opens on Saturday, November 1 for nine performances, with evening shows at 7:30 p.m. on November 1, 6 to 8, and 13 to 15 and 1:30 p.m. matinee performances on November 2 and 9.
Tickets are $30 adults, $27 seniors, and $20 students, with a special two-for-one ticket offer available for opening night. For tickets, visit www.peterboroughtheatreguild.com.
VIDEO: “291” by Jade O’Keeffe promo – Peterborough Theatre Guild
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