Gordon Dickerson

Gordon Dickerson (19**-) is a London based literary and theatrical agent.

Biography

Born in in Kingston, London, and at the age of 3 months he and his mother joined his father in Libya, where he was working as an air traffic controller. His brother and sister were born in Libya and they then moved to Cyprus and later to Aden. Whilst living in Aden, he started school in Sussex, England at the age of 8, and would re-join the family in Aden and then Kenya during the school holidays. The family returned to the UK and they lived in Northampton where he went to the local comprehensive school. When they moved to Brighton Gordon attended Varndean Grammar School and, at the age of 18, he went to Southampton University where he gained a BA (Hons) in Modern History and Politics. Whilst at Southampton he directed a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull and appeared in several plays including Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

On graduating began to work in various capacities front of house at The Theatre Royal, Brighton. After 7 months he landed a job as the assistant to the theatre producer at The Robert Stigwood Organisation in Brook Street, London, where he worked on shows such as Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palace Theatre, Evita at the Prince Edward Theatre, the London premiere of Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd at Drury Lane and a very short lived show from Australia at the Phoenix Theatre.

As his job became more precarious, he left the company to travel to New York, hoping to land a job there, but a few months later an opportunity arose back in London at the Literary Agency, Fraser and Dunlop Scripts Ltd in Regent Street. After a stint as temporary assistant to the managing director, he was offered a full time job as an agent with specific responsibility for promoting the agencies stage plays regionally in the UK and overseas.

It was here he met the literary agent Kenneth Ewing, who would become his life partner. They were together for 27 years.

In 1988 the agency merged with the venerable literary agency A.D. Peters, to form Peters, Fraser and Dunlop (PFD) and moved to new offices in Chelsea Harbour. By the early nineteen nineties he felt in need of some kind of change and decided to leave the agency, but was persuaded by a number of clients, including John Osborne, to set up on his own and to represent them. He did so in 1994 and has operated as an independent literary agent, since then.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Dickerson was introduced to the works of Reza de Wet by actor Steven Stead, who not only admired De Wet's work, but went ahead to translate two of them. Dickerson set about selling these plays and came to South Africa to meet the author and ended up becoming the international agent for all her work.

Besides acting as the international agent for Reza de Wet, he also represents several playwrights who have had plays performed in South Africa, inter alia by the various Performing Arts Councils and the Pieter Toerien organization.

In 2018 he concluded a contract with the South African film maker Eubulus Timothy for him to make a contemporary film of Look Back in Anger by John Osborne, set in Durban.