Kay Dixon’s “#eleven” came to the Next Step Festival as a piece that was not even ready for a table reading. Dixon did give the audience four plot lines that could have been/could be developed into something functional and interesting, but none are currently developed. But, more importantly, Dixon’s writing wreaks of distain for her characters – all of her characters.

The plot lines that Dixon introduces are first a mother trying to cope with her suicidal daughter. That is certainly a theme that could have been developed into an interesting play. But the mother disappears after scene two and the daughter becomes narrator/observer once she is committed.

The stories of the patients that the daughter is confined with is where Dixon spends the most time. But there are too many patients to get any real depth and the audience will eventually learn that all of their narratives are false. This is a difficult shortcoming to correct since Dixon reminds us in every scene that every story gets the same weight as every other as each institutional scene begins with a reading of the roster of patients.

Also, introduced is the idea that the staff is incompetent and corrupt. That is something that certainly can be developed into an engrossing play, but Dixon, even in her “reveal”, only touches on that peripherally. And that topic would seem to hold danger for a BIPOC author doing a play with a BI{OC cast.

Finally, a couple of scenes from the end of this overly long exercise, Dixon lets us in on the secret that we have been watching a sci-fi/horror play. This timeline involves the patients capturing and drugging the staff that was using them as guinea pigs and then holding the staff as their captives. This is very hard to pull off without at least one protagonist, ala the Invaders TV series. Dixon lacks that protagonist.

However, the biggest block to the success of “#eleven” is Dixon’s complete lack of respect for any of her characters. Not one character is given a story line that is real. They are all either figments of the imagination or abusive. There is no one to cheer for as each character functions only in their own selfish and delusional bubble.