Tom Pearson (he/they) is an award-winning American multimedia theater artist, choreographer, and poet. He is a founder and co-artistic director of the New York City-based performance company, Third Rail Projects, co-creator of its long-running immersive hits, Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise, and director for the Global Performance Studio, a program for cultural listening and exchange.
Tom’s work combines material culture and audience-centered narratives using theater, art, choreography, and poetry to investigate identity and belonging, loss and reclamation, exile and refuge. His mixed-media projects are often site-specific, immersive, and interactive, and he frequently collaborates with other artists through shared practice in-community.
Tom holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University and has received numerous awards for his writings and performances. He was a resident of Brooklyn for over 20 years, and during that time was named among the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn Culture by Brooklyn Magazine. Tom now lives in Greenwood Lake, just northwest of New York City on the traditional lands of the Munsee-Lenape.
Tom’s performance works have been called “wildly imaginative” by The New Yorker and “haunting, hallucinatory, and profoundly intimate” by VOGUE. His debut poetry collection, The Sandpiper’s Spell, was heralded by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2019, calling the volume “vastly panoramic and deeply introspective” and proclaiming Tom “a startlingly intuitive new poet—one to watch.” His follow-up collection of poetry and art, Still, the Sky, published in 2022, received several book awards and has been called “a work of originality and power” by Publisher’s Weekly.
Tom has received accolades for his work, including: two New York Dance & Performance (BESSIE) Awards (Vanishing Point, 2008 & Then She Fell, 2013), the Kingsbury and Cody Harris Allen Awards for writing from the Florida State University, an IllumiNation Award from the Ford Foundation and National Museum of the American Indian, an Indie Reader Discovery Award, three Reader Views Literary Awards, a Readers’ Favorite Book Award, and several international film festival awards for his collaborative experimental short film, The Night Garden. He was a contributor and featured artist for the Emmy Award-winning series IMMERSIVE.WORLD by ALL ARTS.
Additionally, his company, Third Rail Projects, has been recognized as part of the creative team of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning virtual reality adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Wolves in the Walls, as a recipient of the Chita Rivera Award for Choreography for Ghost Light at Lincoln Center Theater’s LTC3 at the Clare Tow Theater, and with a Drama Desk Awards Nomination for Unique Theatrical Experience for Midsummer: a Banquet.
Tom has received commissions for the creation of original performance works from: Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, Jacob’s Pillow, The Folger Shakespeare Library, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and National Museum of the American Indian, Dance Theater Workshop, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Danspace Project, i•ma•gine | e•volve (Berette Macaulay), On the Boards, BRIC, and more.
He has likewise received fellowships and artist residencies from: CEC Artslink (St. Petersburg, Russia); The Bogliasco Foundation (Bogliasco, Italy); the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut); DanceNOW SILO (Springtown, PA); the Swarthmore Project (Swarthmore College, PA); Topaz Arts (Woodside, NY); Dance Theater Workshop (New York, NY); The Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation (Hong Kong); Ace Hotel New York (New York, NY); the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York, NY); Ziferburg Café (St. Petersburg, Russia); Governors Island (Governors Island, NY); and Olin College of Engineering (Needham, Massachusetts); among others.
His work has been shown on PBS, NBC, and other networks.
He is the author of two books of poetry, The Sandpiper’s Spell and Still, the Sky. A bilingual edition (English with Italian translation) of Still, the Sky, Eppure, Il Cielo is also now available.
Tom is of European (English/German/Irish) and American Indian (Coharie/Tsalagi) decent. Though not tribally enrolled, he is committed to the work of Native artists and communities and frequently collaborates on Indigenous-led projects.
Available Upon Request:
COMPLETE LIST OF WORKS (PDF)
CURRICULUM VITAE (PDF)
PRESS COVERAGE