Dixon Place

Dixon Place is a very friendly and intimate theatre for experimental and community productions, a place that screams NYC underground arts without unkemptness or unprofessionalism. We came here recently to watch a production and had a great time pre-​drinking at their bar before the show. Prices are reasonable and all proceeds help Dixon Place out, so it’s for a good cause.

Pretty good time. Great prices. Very artistic crowd and almost like a hideout for the artistic crowd of the surrounding area. I wouldn’t recommend it for a night. They seen to draw a pretty specific crowd.

If you were looking for some truly underground theater and works, you will find it here. This is the sort of venue we need more of in NYC; friendly crowd, intimate setting and a very small but cozy theater with a great stage that did not feel sketchy or make you think the performers were unprofessional for choosing that setting. The show I saw here was wonderful since it was not the sort of thing you’d bring little children to & had irreverence (which I love).
You can’t really sneak in if you’re late for a show so make sure you get here on time. Seating is tight so if that’s not your thing, you may want to go elsewhere. However, this space did not feel oppressively hot or cold; they must have some decent temperature control here.
Also, make sure if you drink to go to their bar since you can have «guilt free alcohol» as a staff person here told us last night. All the proceeds go to their venue. I’m rooting for this place to be around as long as possible.

Intimate performance space with an awesome cocktail list. The Prowler was everything I love in a tequila/​mezcal drink: smoky, spicy, and strong. Can’t wait to return!

Dixon Place really brings in a nice crowd full of intelligent, open-​minded, and witty individuals! Performances here are nothing less than unique and entertaining with a very large stage space! The bar area is very nice with lots of close quarter seating.

This place is everything a small art house /​lounge should be — affordable, exciting, friendly.
We saw a one-​man psychedelic opera for $ 15, then spent $ 40 on four craft cocktails — go with the Brouhaha (cognac, Prosecco, lemon bitters). Staff was really warm and chatty, and lots of funky-​looking people made the scene fun.

Year 2013 begins with a spoken word poetry performance for the honorable 2013 New Year’s Day Poetry Extravaganza «Black Blizzard» where I was one of 150 poets to perform.
Dixon Place is an active black box theater for live performances and a bar. The stage is equipped of resonating good quality sound emitting from the microphone and lighting effects. Seats are stadium style but tight with absolutely no leg room and very narrow. It is a complete disruption for an utter inconvenience to performers when spectators arrive late or leave early up and down the aisles to disturb the set while in progress. An upper level for bar/​lounge is more comfortable through a spiral staircase where the view of the stage of this black box theater is visible. Dixon Place is good for emerging artists/​performers and established artists as Cyndi Lauper and Justin Vivian Bond. It serves as a local theater to call upon like-​minded creative talents as a collective community of performers and artists. The corridor is adorned with photos of past artists and notable mentions in media print news. The stairway is decorated with guitars and silhouettes of people.
Bartenders are friendly and distribute free water. No food is available, ergo have a full meal elsewhere before arriving for any performance at Dixon Place. I do not recommend DP for children as the events are not kid friendly atmosphere. Further ado, I do not believe food or drink is permitted inside the theater but only at the bar. One unisex facility of four stalls where one contains a male urinal stall, which I have never seen such a thing in NY… ergo, I guess to save space and plumbing matters?
At the entry way flyers and postcards of upcoming local events are freely plastered on a community bulletin board and ledge which creates a chaotic cluttered mess, including a clear bowl, full to the rim of condoms!

Great space. Surprisingly large downstairs. Recently I saw an excellent play there called Bradass87.

Pretty nice lounge and performance space downtown.
The Positives:
+ The performance space downstairs. It’s a surprising size given the intimate coziness of the upstairs bar/​lounge. For our show, we sat upstairs. Still a great view of the stage, good sound quality. Wasn’t what I expected at all when I walked in, and I mean that in a good way.
+ Friendly bartenders.
+ Comfortable seating in the upstairs lounge, once it emptied out enough to get a seat.
The Negatives:
— It’s too small for good organization before a show downstairs. The box office line inevitably crosses in front of the bathroom line, and the line to get downstairs crosses in front of the live music upstairs. Especially rough on a Friday night, when you also have the drinking weekend crowd in the space.
— Unisex bathroom. There’s no way to do a unisex bathroom + a tipsy crowd without awkward moments.
I’d be interested in coming back on a different night.

Good
Sound for
Small art space
For music or
Drunk people talking over the music.

I like Dixon Place because they put on the shows I want to see and you can drink in the theatre (I saw Atlas here, btw. If you didn’t catch it, it was breathtaking and you should totally watch for more Lava performances to appear here. I hope they do soon.) My only criticisms were a) that the bar ran out of mulled wine (which really was a tragedy, as the winter evening would have gone perfectly with some kind of spiced wine) and a lot of other drinks early in the evening, as if they weren’t expecting the kind of crowd they got and b) the performances were too close together. My friends and I were drinking and talking here after the show and we felt like we were interrupting the show taking place just after ours. It would have been nice to have the entire evening here after Atlas, but we wound up having to leave due to those two things.

Great cocktails. Trust the bartender, she knows what she’s talking about. Very nice music/​Ambience.

Cute small performance art space in the front by the bar. Great bartender (Raven!) and cheap drinks ($ 5 wine, $ 3 PBR, etc). Cash only.
But dudes, it’s a unisex multistall bathroom — please shut your stall door. K, thanks.

I caught a performance here for the X-​Yu dance festival in early June and was quite impressed with the lower level performance space as well as the upstairs bar.
the Theater/​Performance space:
Spacious yet very intimate. The stage is basically a huge room with several rows of seating against the back wall. There is additional seating on a platform surrounding the stage. It probably seats 30 people downstairs and 60 total (including the upstairs). For tickets, there’s a box office inside and they accept cash or debit/​credit cards.
the Bar:
Cash only (there’s an ATM down the street). Awesome mixed drink selection. Everyone in our group tried a different drink and each was well made (strong and tasty!). Our mixed drinks were all around $ 10.

My first visit to Dixon Place was this past weekend, when I took the BoltBus to NYC to catch JULIAN — a performance from Rick Sorkin and Jeffrey Marsh (et al).
When I first entered the space I thought it was a nice and somewhat typical indie performance art space; complete with a makeshift bar, mis-​matching chairs and tables and a small stage with a glaring spotlight (which thankfully was only on during pre-​show announcements).
What I quickly realized was that the performance space was actually downstairs — past the throwback to an earlier day restrooms (nice!) and ticket window.
As you follow the crowd down the stairs, literally through a hall that more resembles a tunnel carved out of the foundation — you come up on the other side to a truly stunning black-​box performance space.
I was floored with the space, the sound and the lighting.
The show, btw, was wonderful and I plan to stop by Dixon when back in NYC to see what else is happening underneath the city streets!
Bravo!

What a great location for a theatrical production. Nestled in the village, this cozy space played host to a Wide Eyed production in the NYC Fringe. The performance space was a ground level black box in style. There was a catwalk for the design team and additional seating which I really liked. Everything is new in the space. I could think of a million production ideas here. They also have a bar in the lobby! What’s better than that! I am a fan of Dixon Place.

I saw a performance of ‘Sunday Best’ at Dixon Place, and enjoyed it a lot. I sat in the upper tier, and had a birds eye view of the show. The ‘stage’ is at the same level as the seats on the main level, but I think it adds to the charm of being a small theater space. The acoustics were great, and the lobby/​bathroom was nice despite being a little small. The bathroom is unisex, so don’t be shocked if you walk in and someone of the opposite sex walks out of one of the stalls. The stalls are like individual closets, so it’s not too bad actually. Solid place for a show, I added myself to their mailing list for future shows.

Can’t say I was in New York City long enough to say…“Well back when Dixon Place was on Bowery…”
I just know it well enough to know that yes it moved and that it’s a really cute space for community/​experimental/​local theater productions.
Though technically I didn’t see a show here. I just worked on a show that never got a performance, which is why I got to see the space and all the inner workings of it.
The lobby was a little bit shabby, but that’s cuz they’re doing construction so it’s totally forgiven. The bathrooms are really teeny tiny and it feels like you’re peeing in a phone booth, but it’s super clean and kind of cute. Never thought I’d say that about a bathroom.
The space will fit about 100 people. There’s no elevated stage when I got there, so it still FEELS like a rehearsal space but everything is shiny and new and clean. All the fixtures are hung. Again, didn’t see a real show here, but I’m sure it would have been great with all the new facilities and such.

It’s small. And when I say small I mean «intimate». So that means there’s no such thing as getting a bad seat here. The seating consists of couches and mis-​matched chairs (even a rocking chair) lined up side by side. The performer’s stage is the piece of floor in the front. The performer’s dressing room is behind the curtain. I like it here. Right now they’re having this thing called Hot! Festival which runs June 28-​August 26. I’m seeing Jeffrey Essmann there tonight. He’s great.
To reserve tickets (plan on doing that b/​c the place is small and I’m sure it fills up quickly) you have to leave a message on their answering machine and say, «Hi, I’m Donna. Here’s my phone #. I want to reserve 2 tickets to blah blah blah.» and that’s it, so you wonder if they even got your message, but you show up and they have your tickets waiting for you! It’s magic.
Four stars because I’m scared of their narrow wooden stairs.