Columbia College Today

Brandon Victor Dixon ’03 (left) took leave from the College during his senior year for his first professional acting job as Simba in The Lion King.

Photo: Disney photo by Joan Marcus

Soft-spoken and polite, with thin-rimmed glasses and thick arms, 25-year-old Brandon Victor Dixon ’03 seems reluctant to talk about himself at all. But with enough prodding, he details a remarkably successful stage career — first, as a college student struggling through auditions, and years later, as a Broadway actor trying to finish his degree.

On December 1, 2005, Dixon’s dreams came true. He was 24, almost three years out of Columbia, having performed more than 400 times in a traveling production of Disney’s The Lion King. With his parents and luminaries such as Sidney Poitier in the audience on opening night, he premiered the role of Harpo in Broadway’s The Color Purple. Dixon calls that experience — and the Tony nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical that he earned in his first Broadway role —“an indescribable joy.”

Less joyful, presumably, was the homework he’d often finish after his performances. Dixon, who entered the College in 1999, had left school durng his senior year for his first professional acting job in The Lion King, but the theater brought him back to New York and closer to fulfilling a promise he’d made to his father to graduate, which he did in May.

Raised in Gaithersburg, Md., the youngest of three boys, Dixon was a natural performer from a young age, according to his mother, Lorna, a counselor. He gravitated to the first piano he saw, at 2, declared his intentions to become an actor at 8 and started signing autographs by 12. “As far as I’m concerned, he clearly came into this lifetime to do this work,” Dixon’s mother says. And though his father, Victor, an electrical contractor, emphasized education first, he has never missed a performance.

Dixon says he always dreamed of performing on Broadway, but it wasn’t until high school that he gained the confidence to consider it a realistic goal. The summer after his junior year at the Washington, D.C., boarding school St. Albans School, Dixon studied at the British Academy of Dramatic Acting. During senior year, he became one of the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts’ Presidential Scholars, after a rigorous audition process. It was one thing to be recognized locally, Dixon says, but winning a national competition gave him the perspective he needed. “Once I won that scholarship, I knew it was possible,” he says.

With that newfound confidence, Dixon applied early decision to Columbia, where he could get a broad education instead of being limited by the narrow curriculum of a conservatory. He started as an economics major, but couldn’t ignore his passion and changed his major to film and finally to theater.

Dixon was involved from the beginning, with a Barnard theater department production of Romeo & Juliet during his first year that Dixon says “really knocked me on my ass and showed me that I had a lot to learn, which is a good thing.”

Denny Partridge, the head of Barnard’s theater department at the time, recounts taking this production to a women’s maximum-security prison. The 300 women — most of them seeing Shakespeare for the first time — were on the edges of their seats, Partridge recalls. “It was a lovefest for Brandon,” who played Romeo. She’s been impressed ever since. “There are tons of talented young people around but when the talent is combined with the perseverance and humility that this man has, [that is rare],” she says.

In his sophomore year, Dixon starred in the 107th Varsity Show, Sex, Lies and Morningside, which he calls “one of the most extraordinary theatrical experiences I’ve had.” He played outgoing President George Rupp, who in the play signed a deal with MTV to produce a reality show on Columbia’s campus.

Meanwhile, in between classes and V-Show rehearsals, Dixon planned to take full advantage of living in New York. A major goal, Dixon says, was to avoid the period of waiting tables facing many aspiring actors. So he got an agent, and began to aggressively pursue a professional career.

In summer 2001, he had his first of several auditions for Disney, which was trying to replicate the success of the New York production of The Lion King with a traveling version. More than a year later, when he was supposed to be auditioning for an understudy part, Dixon won the lead role of Simba. He felt lucky to be invited back after several “horrible” auditions, but in this one, he says, he was impressive. So impressive that the associate director asked, “What happened to you?”

To prepare for the physically demanding part, Dixon ran four miles a day and took yoga and dance classes three times a week, sometimes skipping Columbia courses in anticipation of his first professional job. He left Columbia after the first semester of his senior year, officially “on leave,” and in February 2003 reported to Chicago.

His first Broadway role, in The Color Purple, earned Dixon a Tony nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical.

Photo: Paul Kolnik

Dixon stayed in the role for over a year in Chicago and four months in San Francisco. Then, he says simply, “It was time to move on.” In July 2004 he flew to New York to audition for the Broadway production of The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. He got a call an hour later: “We’re going to Atlanta [for a workshop run] — do you want to come?”

Back in New York for Broadway rehearsals, the announcement that Oprah Winfrey had become an executive producer of the show only intensified the attention. “Everybody was there,” Dixon says of the December 2005 premiere. “Not just anybody who was anybody, but everybody.” Some of those anybodies included Spike Lee, Denzel Washington and Tina Turner. Dixon thought the crowd at The Lion King had spoiled him, but The Color Purple garnered standing ovations every night. “I’ve never seen an audience with this much enthusiasm for anything,” he says. “It’s one thing to be in a show with all this fanfare that’s just so-so. But this show’s amazing.”

At the same time, despite eight Broadway performances a week and occasional appearances on the soap One Life to Live, Dixon fulfilled a promise to his father to finish his degree. He reenrolled with seven courses to go, and the classes he took included playwriting, set design and a thesis on meditation and spirituality in performance. Though his schedule was grueling, Dixon says he’s glad he finished his degree. “I’ll put my diploma right next to my Tony nomination,” he says.

After a 14-month run in which Dixon says he learned to have fun onstage, his last performance in The Color Purple was on January 28. Though he says simply again, “It was time to move on,” Dixon won’t reveal future plans. But about Broadway he says, “It was a once in a lifetime experience.” Then he pauses, “Well, I hope not.”

Josie Swindler ’07 makes sure to stop at the Times Square TKTS booth before seeing a Broadway show. She was thrilled to join the ranks of Columbia alumni in May.

ALUMNI UPDATES

Brandon Victor Dixon ’03: From Lion to Lion King