Careers – Andrew Dickson Interview

As the former Theatre Editor at The Guardian, Andrew Dickson has a wealth of expertise in all things related to the world of the arts. Having travelled all over the globe and published one book on Shakespeare (now working on another) the opportunity to proverbially pick his brain about his professional experience was not to be missed.

First things first, what’s your general working day?

There isn’t really a general day, it just depends on what’s going on. The interesting thing is that there’s a flexible day, it allows for a lot of variety. I might be seeing a play in the evening, I might be researching a feature or working on my book. It all depends.

What would you say your favourite creative form to write about is?

It has to be theatre, because that’s where my background is and that’s what I’ve written most about. The good thing about being a journalist is that you get to use different forms. There’s a challenge in each of them, whether it be that you’ve got a PR breathing down your neck or the person you’re interviewing is about to get on a plane. It’s the variety that makes it interesting, doing a feature is totally different from doing a research piece which is totally different from doing a background on an art form or a particular art movement. Everything is completely different and that’s what makes it fascinating.

Bit of a cliché, but what’s your favourite Shakespeare play?

That’s an impossible question; it depends on whichever one I’m seeing at the time! The great thing about Shakespeare and all kinds of drama is that if it’s a good production and an interesting context, you can be reminded of something you’ve not seen before. Right now it’s Cymbeline, ask me again next week it’ll be Twelfth Night, the week after it’ll be King Lear, it just depends on what I’m thinking about, and I think that all great art is like that, there’s so many dimensions to it and things within it that it just depends on what is going on in your head at the time.

What do you think about the filming of theatre and distributing it into cinemas?

It’s an evolving medium, and it brings something different to the performance. Initially, like many people in the arts, I was at first doubtful about it, because the thing about theatre is that it’s a live experience and you’re in the same room as the people performing to you, and each show is different. However, having done a lot of travel in the past few years, talking to theatre makers across the globe, you realise that people are suddenly having access to this kind of art that they wouldn’t have accessed before. Secondly, you get a different kind of atmosphere at the cinema, it doesn’t replicate the experience of being in the theatre, but it’s interesting nonetheless how people can then begin to engage with it on social media. It’s changing all the time, what I would love to see would be much more art from elsewhere broadcast back to Britain, there’s a real sense that places like the National Theatre are centres of this, but it would be good to see art from other places in British cinemas.

What are your thoughts on the decline of conventional media and the arts?

Newspaper sales are declining, you only have to look at the circulation figures to know that. That doesn’t mean that media’s dying, I think it’s actually increasing, as there’s much more media around than when I began to think about working in journalism. Now I can look at all kinds of social media and see what’s happening on all forms. There are many answers to how media is evolving and there might not be just one answer to it. The Guardian, for instance, has been focusing on building a global readership and is one of the most widely read online newspapers in the world, so I know when I publish anything on that platform, it’s going out to an enormous global audience. So I wouldn’t say that media is declining, it’s just changing, and I think that’s quite exciting.

Finally, what would be your advice to aspiring arts journalists?

If I had one piece of advice, it’s a cliché piece of advice but it’s true, is that the only way you get into writing about stuff is by finding something that you love. Something that you can do really well, that only you can do, and that you’re passionate about. That could be contemporary dance, horse racing, make up, it doesn’t matter. Just find the thing you’re passionate about and do it, write about it. Set up a blog, use Twitter, use all the available publishing forms. It’s pretty easy to publish now so long as you have a web connection. Get passionate and allow yourself to become a geek and become obsessed about it. Journalism is competitive because it is good and an interesting job. Go to the things you love and write about it. Unless you do it, people won’t see it, you just have to do it. To be a writer, you just have to write. If you write, you can call yourself a writer. You get better at it and better at it, and you’ve just got to keep trying and do it.