About Tom

About

Bessie Award-winning multidisciplinary artist Tom Pearson works in experimental theater, visual art, and poetry, creating immersive, site-specific projects that blend sensory performance with audience-centered design. He is a co-founder/artistic director of Third Rail Projects and director of the Global Performance Studio, an international program for cultural listening and collaboration.

Rooted in a deep kinship with land, water, memory, and ecology, his current work (GESTURES for Rising Waters, Ablations) transforms climate grief into conceptual scores for community ritual and co-creation, while his previous suite Archives of Asterion (Stanzas, Ikaros, The Archives of Asterion, Still, the Sky) queers mythological archetypes to disrupt binaries of identity, hubris, and the hero cycle while meditating on exile, solitude, and refuge.

Other works focus on social justice through community collaboration. UN-[TITLED] (with Berette S Macaulay, On the Boards) examines community resistance to gentrification, while Yours To Lose (with Freedom Forum at SXSW) engages audiences in activations of First Amendment freedoms.

While Tom’s focus remains on these multimedia projects surrounding climate, queerness, and community, his practice was shaped by decades of large-scale dance and theater productions. With Third Rail Projects, he co-created Then She Fell, The Grand Paradise, and Vanishing Point. These, along with his larger body of work, earned two New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards, a National Performance Network Creation and Development Fund Award, Drama Desk and United States Artists nominations, and inclusion in Brooklyn Magazine’s "100 Most Influential People in Culture," alongside Third Rail’s contribution to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning VR adaptation of Wolves in the Walls (with Fable Studios).

Parallel to his stage work, Tom is author of two poetry collections: The Sandpiper’s Spell (a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2019) and Still, the Sky. He has taught at Florida State University, Wesleyan University, Olin College of Engineering, and with the Broadway Teachers Group. Commissions include Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, Jacob’s Pillow, On the Boards, BRIC, Danspace Project, La MaMa E.T.C., Dance Theater Workshop, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Residencies and fellowships include the Bogliasco Foundation, Emily Harvey Foundation, CEC ArtsLink/Back Apartment Residency, Governors Island, and Flux Factory.

Tom holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU.