About Tom

I’m a multimedia artist working in experimental theater, art, and poetry whose immersive, site-specific projects blend sensory performance with audience-centered design. I’m a co-founder and co-artistic director of Third Rail Projects (est. 2001) and the Global Performance Studio. My work draws from memory, psychology, and dream-logic/fragmented narratives rooted in movement, poetry, and location. Place is a prominent character in my works, possessing its own systems of culture, history, topography, and sentience—and my portfolio as choreographer, poet, and experience designer enable me to iterate from a palette of imagery, gesture, and ritual structure.

My recent projects—part of a distinct body of work under the heading Archives of Asterion (Stanzas, Ikaros, The Archives of Asterion, Still, the Sky)—reinterpret the classical Labyrinth, combining speculative timelines and a shared coming-of-age for Icarus and the Minotaur. This queering of archetypes loosens traditional binaries concerning identity, the fabrication of hubris, and the tension between the natural world and the god/monster/hero cycle. Comprising site-specific performance, published poetry, interactive installation art, VR, and film, this collection looks for meaning in the spaces between exile and refuge, imprisonment and escape, flight and failure. Through memoir, artifacts, ecofacts, and epistolary fragments, it returns to the pivotal moment of first wounding—an adolescent incident that shapes personal mythologies.

Other works seek social justice through community collaborations. Projects like UN-[TITLED] (with Berette Macaulay, i•ma•gine | e•volve, On the Boards) focused on how communities are displaced by and resist gentrification, while Yours To Lose (with Freedom Forum at South by Southwest) invited audiences into multisensory scenes exploring the value of First Amendment freedoms. Likewise, through the Global Performance Studio, I partner with communities worldwide to facilitate site-responsive projects centered on dialogue, creative exchange, and deep cultural listening.

Rooted in a deep kinship with land, water, memory, and ecology, my current trajectory—including works like GESTURES for Rising Waters and Ablations—transforms climate grief into conceptual scores for community ritual, activation, and acts of co-creation.

While my focus remains on these evolving, participatory worlds, the foundation of my practice was shaped by decades of large-scale productions. With Third Rail Projects, I co-created Off-Broadway productions like Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise and the dance theater work, Vanishing Point, (with Zach Morris, Jennine Willett), These projects earned recognition, including being named among Brooklyn Magazine’s "100 Most Influential People in Culture," two Bessie Awards, a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation and Development Fund Award, and nominations for Drama Desk and United States Artists Awards. Third Rail Projects, was also recognized for its part in the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning VR adaptation of Wolves in the Walls, with Fable Studios.

My literary path runs parallel to my stage work, and I’m the author of two poetry collections, The Sandpiper’s Spell (a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2019) and Still, the Sky. My poetry shares a signature fascination with solitude, body memory, and intimacy along with queer reconstructions of traditional rituals, myths, and archetypes.

As adjunct faculty and visiting artist, I have taught at universities including Florida State University, Wesleyan University, and Olin College of Engineering, and most recently, teaching workshops with the Broadway Teachers Group.

My work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Jacob’s Pillow, On the Boards, BRIC, Danspace Project, La MaMa ETC, Dance Theater Workshop, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, among others. My practice has been supported by artist residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation, the Emily Harvey Foundation, CEC ArtsLink, Governors Island, The Swarthmore Project, Topaz Arts, and Flux Factory.

I hold an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University.