We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tommy Dickie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tommy, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
Honestly, after all these years in both performance and education, the most meaningful may have actually been this past summer, with a production of Matilda I directed at my summer camp in Vermont. I grew up going to this camp, an all-boys camp in Fairlee VT. I’ve now spent 25 summers there over the years, and for over half that time have directed the big musical, with about 60 boys every summer.
What Matilda writers Dennis Kelly & Tim Minchin weaved with this script is stunning – 15 years ago, they wove together a <i>brilliant</i> show, and I feel so fortunate to have gotten to lead an eager collection of 56 boys through it. The comedic highs are side-splitting, the dramatic peaks are strong enough to change the fabric of one’s mind & heart, and the lessons & ideas it has coursing through its bones <i>resonate</i> with kids in singularly authentic ways.
I’ve never had more people tell me afterwards, with full hearts, that this was the best camp show they’d ever seen, and that was on account of the palpable energy vibrating through every kid on that stage. This production was in their hands and alive, as they rode the wave and <i>played</i> within the scrumptious story we had constructed over just 2.5 quick weeks. Theater is meant to feel like a living, breathing exchange with the audience, and this time around that felt uniquely palpable. These kids BROUGHT it from day one; they tinkered with things on their own show weekend; they reacted like pros to technical glitches & inevitable mishaps, spinning magic before our eyes by seeing every crack in the gloss as an opportunity for something new and, yes, alive. And they were able to do this on account of the support they felt from one another – they each felt safe taking chances with the rest of this brave and caring ensemble by their sides. I felt like such a proud papa, watching them truly make it their OWN, individually & collectively.
I heard recently that if children don’t experience theater by the time they’re 12 years old, that it really won’t become a part of their future life when they’re older (even merely as audience members). Theater does unique things to children, in how it helps shape their journey on the path to becoming adults, and in turn shape who they become. I’ve witnessed it help shape children’s psyche, confidence, and sense of home inside of themselves, as they learn to take risks, get out of their heads, embrace vulnerability (alongside others), and reap the rewards of having taken such a leap. It moves me in real, real ways, and I’m so grateful to be able to be a shepherd of this experience for so many children, year after year, and in a community that I’ve cared deeply about since I was a 10 year old camper in 1992.
I’m primarily an actor in the arts, but work with kids has always been a huge piece of my life (more so now as I took on a job as a middle school math teacher a few years ago!), and as I get older I find myself wringing more & more joy out of living vicariously through the performance highs of others, out of utilizing my performative impulses as opportunities to give children a win with an audience. When I was a kid, I was shy and unconfident. Theater provided me an outlet to find myself, in community with others, and slowly develop a spirited home inside the cells that make up ME. I still find great value and joy in it, but in some ways it’s already given me what I need in this world, and now there’s a piece of me that wants to make sure current & future children who could benefit as I did get access to the same opportunities & experience.
What a gift for this to be a major piece of what I’m doing with my time in this fine world.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After finding a home, and building a clearer sense of self, through the theater in middle school & high school, I went on to major in it at Dartmouth College, after which I ventured to New York to “pound the pavement”. In NY, I acted in various Off & Off-Off Broadway shows, short films & the like, while supporting myself as a math tutor (I did go to Dartmouth thinking I would major in Physics or Engineering after all :).
Four years out of college, I found myself at a crossroads. On the one hand, acting fulfilled me in ways that nothing else could, and I was just not going to stop the pursuit of sustainability in that world. But on the other hand, I was learning that the freelance hustle of acting didn’t feel like the right fit for my mind & heart. To that end, teaching tempted me – I did have a wealth of experience, and joy, in education after all, between tutoring and a continued relationship with my childhood summer camp in Vermont, where I had moved into role of “the Drama guy”. I decided to go to grad school, so that I could fast-track my sense of how much viability there was with acting for me, and to become the best actor I can be, even if I only wound up doing it in a community theater capacity while living the life of a teacher down the road.
I went to Brown University / Trinity Rep for my MFA in Acting, where I had the time of my life alongside the most vibrant and open-hearted collaborators I could ask for. At “B/T”, I deeply & intricately honed my abilities as a performer and artist (supported by a brilliant, incisive, and passionately supportive faculty), and perhaps more importantly developed a trust in my identity as such. After graduating in 2012, I moved out to Los Angeles, to follow representation options there, and partly driven by a love of film & TV, which runs so deep that one who knows me can only marvel at how many sentences I’ve written here before mentioning it. More on this later.
In LA, I’ve slowly built a life. I restarted my math tutoring, which transitioned to a job as a full-time math teacher during the pandemic, which I joyfully do at a nice private school in Brentwood, surrounded by other inspired jacks-of-all-trades. I spent years in the sketch comedy world, manifesting monthly hilarity at iO West. I’ve collaborated with various theater artists, and am now about to act in a brilliant show called <i>Lifeline</i> at The Road Theatre Company in NoHo, where I’ve been a member for years. I’ve made short films & web series with friends, I’ve had roles in various commercials, TV shows, and films, and I’ve toured the film festival circuit with a short & a feature that I was both producer & star of. I own an “artists compound” house (a “single family” but three-unit property where I live with three wonderful friends I know through a children’s theater company I work with), where we host various events including an annual Cabaret Galleret of Your Dreams, where performers and artists share whatever performance act or art they dream of sharing. And I’ve spent my summers back east, watering the garden of my northeast life, seeing family and filling my heart by directing the annual musical at my camp. My life feels so rich and fulfilling it’s almost overwhelming.
And all the while, I spend a great portion of my free time… watching movies. Backstory: I grew up making list after list after list of the movies I love (it was on the verge of psychotic – you should’ve seen the walls of my childhood bedroom…), and tracking the Oscars from an embarrassingly young age. And now I host my own Oscars/movies blog (www.DickiePicks.com), where I predict the Oscars but also give out Dickie Awards for who I think should be nominated & win every year. In conjunction, I make an Oscar-parody video, also called the Dickie Awards, in which I overzealously reenact clips from the top movies of the year (usually with a twist), with categories like “Best Gravitational Defiance” to justify a green screen clip of me as both Elphaba and Glinda sharing a broom. As you can imagine, it truly channels my love of film and pleasure in absurdist comedy in equal measure :)
In sum, I’m of the mind that there is endless joy and connection to be wrung out of entertainment and storytelling, and I’m passionate about creating opportunities, big & small, for myself and others to access this great piece of what it is to be human. I live every day with great curiosity around what is in store for me and the loved ones in my life, and how we can best share in each others’ journeys and stories.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I spent my early post-college actor years thinking that winning an Oscar, Emmy or Tony was the crown jewel (a vision that was natural as an actor obsessed with the Oscars). Over time, I’ve realized that that external seal of approval is such a limited vision, and one that is in no way inherently built upon vibrant human connection. It’s been helpful to ask myself not what totem do I want to strive towards earning, but rather how do I want to <i>feel</i> as I achieve “successes” in life. And I’ve realized: I want to feel powerful, playful, loving, and free. (These are the four basic instructions we either consciously or subconsciously strive for in life, as taught to me by my brilliant former camp director & father figure Barnes Boffey.) Sure an Oscar would make me feel more powerful, but there are other ways to feel powerful. Right now I feel powerful in how I own a home and have a job that I love, and collaborators to make art with – in fact, in some ways I’m in control of more than many “famous actors”. I’m playful at school, and in my relationships. I’m loving towards, and receive love back from, hundreds of people in my life (even if it’s not “on the regular”). And I’ve built a life that actually has a tremendous amount of freedom built in. Do I have as many “high-profile” roles at my disposal as I would if I won a major award? No. But do I need the “world stage” platform in order to be able to entertain and exercise my acting chops? Absolutely not. Honestly, there’s about as much joy in doing a hilarious skit for school as there is in screening a short film at a festival. It’s all about recognizing and valuing a platform and an audience when you have one, and not taking your life’s stage for granted.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In the spring of 2022, in the midst of long-term subbing for a math teacher on parental leave at the school I teach at now (as I had been doing on-and-off for two straight school years), I was offered a permanent job. I had a week to decide, and it was a <i>really</i> overwhelming decision. I felt squeezed between two paths that each felt scary in different ways, and I struggled to look at anything other than the negatives of each. To take the job felt suffocating: I had spent the 17 years since graduating college focused primarily on my acting career, and to take this job would mean greatly reducing the bandwidth I could give to my career, and to some extent the availability I’d have for acting gigs. At a moment when I was juggling multiple projects in post-production, this felt frighteningly constricting. But also, to not take the job felt overwhelmingly frightening: I had grown more and more anxious inside the life of a freelance performer (with my “side hustle” of tutoring limited in how much satisfaction it yielded), and here was a top LA private school, with colleague friends I had nurtured over two years, that knew I was an actor as well and was ok with it, that wanted <i>me</i> despite my lack of proper teaching experience, training, or credentials. To pass up this opportunity felt unwise. So, I took a leap and said yes.
And I’m so glad I did. This community provides me the daily exchange of humanity and energy that I need to feel fully myself. It gives me an outlet to give back to the world by helping nurture the next generation, which enriches my sense of self. (After all, as my former camp director used to say, “we find ourselves through acts of giving”. I think that’s oh so true.) It gives me a baseline of success as a human in this world, such that I don’t feel like my success in this life is dependent upon booking the next acting gig, which just hands my sense of self to processes outside of my control. And I’m still free to be all the other things that are <i>me</i>: I’m still with the same reps as an actor, I still book work here & there (and just get colleagues to sub for me when I do, in exchange for covering for them when their children are home sick, etc – thanks to my team! 🙌), and I still have an artist life with a healthy amount of bandwidth to create, such as the feature film screenplay adaptation of my award-winning short that I’m in the proofreading phase on and am on the verge of sending out to producers!
I’m not hyperbolizing when I say that that week-long decision back in 2022 felt tremendously huge – I cried every day on account of the overwhelming <i>size</i> of the decision, and basically was living a non-stop panic attack over it. But through that seismic struggle birthed a decision that, while hard, was healthy and quite promptly enervating. I love the life I’ve built, and am so grateful for those who encouraged me to look past the fear and onto the possibility (most notably my beloved sister – thanks Amy!)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tommydickie.com
- Instagram: @tommydickie
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/tdickie2
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommy-dickie-655b00132/
- Twitter: @tommydickie
- Youtube: @tommydickie
- Other: www.DickiePicks.com – Oscars/movies blog, etc.
Image Credits
Vanie Poyey, Jenn Grossman