Tommy Foster is an actor, director,

educator, and communication coach

with a career spanning professional

theatre, higher education, cabaret, and private coaching. Trained in both classical acting and musical theatre, Tommy brings a rigorous, deeply human approach to performance, storytelling, and actor training.

             

A native of North Carolina, Tommy spent 14 years working professionally in New York City before returning to the Charlotte area in 2013. His performance career includes regional theatre, commercials, television, concert and cabaret work, and international performance. His stage credits include work with Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, CPCC Summer Theatre, Lee Street Theatre, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, Music Theatre of Connecticut, Ogunquit Playhouse, Gateway Playhouse, Theatreworks USA, Mill Mountain Theatre, and others.

         

As a cabaret artist, Tommy has created multiple solo pieces, including The Method to My Madness, Not While I’m Around, Moving On, Falling Up, Bringing Me Home, and ME:2. His solo show The Method to My Madness received the 2005 Bistro Award from Backstage for Best Theme Show and led to features on CNN, NY1, and Playbill.com.

           

Tommy’s directing work includes productions of Hamlet, Anything Goes, The Children’s Hour, The Tempest, Macbeth, Sweeney Todd School Edition, Chicago, Steel Magnolias, South Pacific, The Last Five Years, Hello, Dolly!, Into the Woods, and other plays and musicals for educational, community, and professional theatre settings. His work is rooted in actor-centered storytelling, physical clarity, musical intelligence, and a particular interest in bringing heightened text to life with specificity and truth. Whether working with classical language, musical theatre, contemporary realism, or new work, Tommy is drawn to processes that help artists release habitual patterns and unnecessary artifice in order to find greater honesty, presence, and freedom.

               

As an educator, Tommy has taught acting, musical theatre, Shakespeare, voice and speech, movement, audition technique, storytelling, and performance at Catawba College, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, Central Cabarrus High School, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, Acting Up! Children’s Theatre, and through his private studio. At Catawba College, he served as Assistant Professor of Theatre and Head of Musical Theatre, teaching a full course load, directing MainStage productions, advising students, serving on committees, and helping shape curriculum for theatre, acting, musical theatre, and design programs.

                 

Tommy maintains a private coaching studio, working with actors, singers, and students on classical text, contemporary monologues, acting a song, audition preparation, voice, speech, material selection, and college audition coaching. His students have been accepted to programs including the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan, The Hartt School, Texas State University, Ball State University, Ithaca College, and others.

         

Tommy holds an MFA in Classical Acting from the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting at George Washington University and a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan. He also trained in Carnegie Mellon University’s Musical Theatre program, completed the Summer Cabaret program at Yale, studied Alexander Technique through Chesapeake Bay Alexander Studies, explored mask and clown through the work of Jacques Lecoq, and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Drama.

           

Across his work as an actor, director, teacher, and coach, Tommy is committed to helping artists find clarity, courage, specificity, and connection — onstage, onscreen, in the classroom, and in their own creative lives.