“It’s a time-honored tradition: The role of the youngest pickpocket, that is ultimately also the cutest pickpocket,” he said. “That show really was the thing that allowed me to catch the (theater) bug, I think. I really found community within that and also just sort of feeling like I was a part of something bigger than myself.”

In the more than 40 years since his debut with the Town Hall Players, Dean, 50, has occupied almost every role on- and off-stage, from stage manager to sound board operator to carpenter. Currently, he is the director of production at The Public Theater in New York, a renowned off-Broadway theater organization that produces New York’s Shakespeare in the Park series and was home to the initial runs of musicals such as “Hamilton” and “A Chorus Line.” He credits his career to the early theater education he received in Saranac Lake.

Following his debut in “Oliver!” Dean was recruited by Joan Frank — described by the Enterprise in 1976 as the “Tri-Lakes Pied Piper of the arts” — to play the lead role in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” with her Half-Pint Players, a group of adolescent actors performing grown-up shows.

One of Dean’s favorite memories place during the Half-Pint Players’ production of “Guys and Dolls.” At intermission, he and his fellow performers would sneak out of the town hall and run across the street to the Waterhole, where they’d perform their songs again — for cash.

Peter Dean, center, performs as a young street urchin in a production of “Oliver!” at the Harrietstown Town Hall in November 1980. (Photo provided — Peter Dean)

“They would throw dollars and quarters at us and we would take our cash, run back across the street, and do act two,” he said. “It was the ’70s and ’80s, we were a little more, as friends have called us, feral.”

In high school, along with some friends, he lobbied for the creation of a drama class at Saranac Lake High School. He also acted with Pendragon Theater throughout the years, working his first paid theater tech gig as a sound board operator and stage crew member. As adulthood and college approached, Dean began to consider a career in the theater.

“About the time that I was a junior in high school, I remember going to my dad and asking, ‘So high school’s about done, what do I do?’ and his response was, ‘Do what you love and get paid for it, everything else will take care of itself,'” Dean said. “It has not taken care of itself all the time, but given where I’m currently sitting, it feels like, for the most part, it really did.”

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Going pro

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Dean auditioned for college programs in acting, preparing his audition at Pendragon, and got into New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Ultimately, however, Dean attended the much smaller Otterbein University, unprepared for the big city. At Otterbein, he transitioned to working behind the scenes and secured an internship with the Denver Center Theater Company, where he would continue to work after graduation.

“It was my master’s program without the degree,” Dean said. “I was able to immerse myself in sort of every aspect of what was happening in the theater.”

It was in Denver in 2000 that Dean was able to participate in one of the more meaningful projects of his career: “The Laramie Project,” a play about the aftermath of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard that was assembled from interviews with residents of Laramie, Wyoming.

“Working on that show greatly changed my perspective on what theater could do,” Dean said. “I was there as the mayor and a large portion of the Laramie population came and saw the show. … The profound impact that had on him and any other member of the community that came to see the show really helped make me realize that, not only did theater have the ability to entertain folks, but really enlighten folks and create profound emotional and spiritual experiences for people.”

Dean decided to pursue more work in the style of “The Laramie Project,” moving to New York in June 2001. The ripple effects of 9/11 cut his time in the city short, however, and he relocated to Boston for a few years to gain more experience. He returned to New York in 2006 and began working as a production manager, a role in production that involves overseeing the budget and schedule of a production as well as hiring crew members and solving emergent problems. Around that time, he began to enjoy success that he credits to his upbringing in Saranac Lake.

“One of the things that I attribute to my success is my brain has a small-town rolodex,” Dean said. “I feel like people who grow up in larger cities have a rolodex that is probably more like 50 to 100 people, because there’s so many people (in the city), you only get to know a few.”

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Community and COVID

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The next decade or so of Dean’s career saw ups and downs. He went from managing a team of more than 160 people in 2008 to working for The Ride, an interactive, performance-based bus tour company, after the 2008 financial crisis caused theater jobs to dry up. For a while, he thought he was done with theater.

It was a one-off job at The Public Theater in 2013 that brought Dean back. He worked on the Public’s inaugural Public Works production, which cast dozens of New Yorkers alongside a handful of professional actors to stage Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

“All these regular New Yorkers coming out and doing community theater but on a professional scale brought back that same sense of community that had first been ignited in me,” he said. “It just reminded me that there was still purity in the art form somewhere, and that purity was still happening professionally, and that brought me back.”

Dean was two weeks out from his first Broadway show going up with Second Stage Theater when Broadway theaters went dark for 18 months due to the COVID pandemic. While his shows were on hold, he volunteered to ride into the city and check on Second Stage’s offices twice a week.

“There was a day I came in and the train stopped at 59th Street, so I walked from 59th Street to 43rd Street down the middle of Eighth Avenue and didn’t have to move once. There were no cars, no traffic, nothing. I wondered if we were ever going to come back again,” he said. “Luckily, this art form, for whatever reason, people need it. I think that’s the big thing. If you don’t have it, there’s a certain amount of care and empathy you lose from not participating in watching people act and tell stories live.”

Broadway returned almost 18 months later, and one of Second Stage’s post-pandemic productions that Dean managed, “Take Me Out,” won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. He returned to the Public in early 2023 as the director of production.

Dean said that any Tri-Lakes kids who aspire to work in the theater one day have a leg up on city kids, thanks to local talent and character.

“In an industry that’s all about connections and who you know, by showing up and working hard and being genuine, you can very quickly become a person who knows people,” he said. “You are from a place where people are genuine, so you already have a leg up on other people.

“(Saranac Lake performers) Bob Pette, Susan Neil and Lonnie Ford are equal in talent to many of the professionals I’ve worked alongside in New York City. Talent is not geographically-based. They all found choices that worked for their lives and brought amazing artistry to their community. Be your best and authentic self no matter where you are.”