Teachings
Tom’s workshops, classes, and higher education curricula are accessible to all persons, abilities, and backgrounds. His multimedia approach leans into immersive and site-specific modalities that center experience design. Combining material culture and audience-centered narratives, mixed-media projects that employ theater, art, choreography, and poetry as well as ceremony, artifact, and mythos, his lesson plans are all about crafting interactive experiences and puts students at the center of their own creative practices.
Tom’s courses emphasize originality and explore methods that support immersive ideation as well as other participant-centered endeavors. His workshops concentrate on different aspects of the creative process and how to build and sustain a practice that not only nurtures and causes us to thrive in our generative work but also helps us plan for creativity, hold space for it, and center it in our daily lives.
Upcoming Workshops
Current
Immersive Makers: Writing, Devising, and Crafting Meaningful Works that Center the Audience Experience with Tom Pearson on Zoom
Thursdays 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm ET November 6, 13, 20 & December 4
$300 for 4 Sessions
ON ZOOM
In this four-week, four-part series, we will dive deep into the tools and methodologies used by Tom Pearson and Third Rail Projects to create meaningful immersive theatrical experiences, specifically in collaborative, cross-cultural, and community-based projects.
We will look at the art of devising and directing from the audience perspective and working with models that support works that can address social issues through storytelling, personal experience, and poetic devices—how we might elaborate a work through allegory, parable, and mythology while simultaneously addressing specific issues and potential solutions within collaborative communities.
Upcoming…
Immersive Makers Workshop Series
Writing, Devising, and Crafting Meaningful Works that Center the Audience Experience with Tom Pearson on Zoom
19:00-21:00 (CET) / 1:00-3:00pm (EST)
February 18, 24 and March 4, 11, 2026
$300 for 4 Sessions (limited number of $200 subsidy tickets available)
ON ZOOM
In this four week, four part series, we will dive deep into the tools and methodologies used by Tom Pearson and Third Rail Projects to create meaningful immersive theatrical experiences. We will look at the art of devising and directing from the audience perspective, mapping through associations, writing and crafting scenarios for immersive theater, and creative practices that support collaboration. Likewise, we will explore sensory design and world-building, along with site observation and exploration which leads to rich environmental design. We will discuss concepts and applications of time and time-keeping, character development and functionality, frameworks like ritual, tasks, games, and ceremony that support immersive work, and overall structural and audience-model considerations. Finally, we will look at examples of how projects might come to fruition, from inception, through iterative development, and finally to performance, with considerations as well for longer runs and after-care.
This workshop series proposes a methodology developed through Tom’s work with the Global Performance Studio for cultural listening and learning, making spaces for us to create shared experiences—so that we may dialogue around a topic from embodied perspectives of analysis and care. Several of Tom’s collaborative works will serve as references, including recent works like Yours To Lose, UN-[TITLED], and This Between Shadow. Other works through the Global Performance Studio as well as techniques derived from site-specific and immersive projects including Ikaros, Then She Fell, and The Grand Paradise, and others will be discussed.
Teaching Activity
Tom has held a number of residency positions and taught at universities throughout the world. He also teaches in-house workshops through Third Rail Projects, and participates in panels, lectures, and academic visits, as well as shorter-term residencies.
Educational residency highlights include: Olin College of Engineering, Creative In Reference (2019-2020); Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Creative Campus Fellow (2018—2019); Florida State University, FSU in NYC Adjunct Faculty (2009—2013); Florida School of the Arts Adjunct Faculty & Visiting Artist (1999 & 2006); La Guardia High School for the Performing Arts, through New York City Opera Arts in Education Program (2004-2005).