Jessica Dean brings a lifelong love of acting to campus

When Jessica Dean stepped into the spotlight as a third grader in a production of “Starlight Express,” she never imagined it would chart the course of her life.

Dean said she didn’t think acting could be a career. That changed in college when she met mentor Troy Dwyer, who told her theater could be a lifelong relationship. 

Dean said Dwyer planted a spark in her that never went away — a spark that grew into a career spanning musicals, producing original works in New York City and becoming a professor at Lehigh. 

Better known to her students as “Jessie,” Dean is an acting professor who has been teaching at Lehigh for more than a year. 

Last year, Lehigh’s Theatre Department offered her the Theodore U. Horger Artist-in-Residence for 2024-25, a residency that brings artists, architects and designers to campus to collaborate on projects and engage with the Lehigh community. 

Dean said her love for the arts blossomed during her childhood in Atlanta, where she was raised in an unconventional environment.

Her parents both had theater backgrounds and met while performing in a college play called “Lovers.” Her father pursued theater professionally for a time before choosing a more stable career.

Dean said she grew up in a theatrical household where emotions were welcomed and creativity was constant. 

“My dad bought a house in the early ‘80s that was a beauty parlor and apartment, so he redid it while we were growing up,” Dean said. “A lot of the time, we didn’t have walls, so we could just roller skate around the downstairs of the house, which was very fun.” 

She said this unstructured environment prepared her for the real world in ways she didn’t recognize at the time. 

Her public school’s theater arts department had no funding, which forced her to be resourceful. 

“We did what we wanted to do,” Dean said. “It gave us all the space to play and discover our own voices and to do the theater we wanted to do.”

Dean said the theater department had a lot of freedom to stage a wide range of productions, like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. She also said throughout high school she worked with challenging material because the school didn’t have enough teachers.

Dean said her public school education prepared her for the real world. By the time she got to college, she had developed a theater vocabulary that was entirely her own. 

“You have to rely on your own taste and your own sensibilities to figure out what it is you want to do and what it is you want to explore,” Dean said.

Later in her career, Dean co-produced a play called Terminus based on her partner’s grandmother and the lingering effects of racism on her family’s legacy. 

“Producing that piece was probably my proudest moment as a producer, because I loved that I’d been a part of that story for so long that it felt like a child in my life,” Dean said. “It felt like it had gone from infancy, and I got to see it grow up and leave home.”

Although teaching wasn’t her original plan, Dean said it became the culmination of her passions.

She began adjuncting in the theater department at Muhlenberg College, but when COVID hit, Lehigh offered her a teaching position. She tried balancing teaching at both schools before choosing Lehigh full time. 

“I found such a welcoming and warm community here — supportive and lovely, with artists who wanted to collaborate and work together,” Dean said. “I knew that was something very special.”

She said what makes Lehigh different from other universities is the scope of its projects and the pride students take in them.

 “(The students) constantly think outside of the box, and the way that I’m able to engage and pull performances out of students who never thought that they were or could be actors is pretty amazing,” she said. 

Dean’s students equally value her teaching. Trevor Brotons, ‘27, took Dean’s Introduction to Acting class last semester.

“It was definitely not a typical college course,” Brotons said. “(It was) extremely engaging and a really awesome experience.” 

Another student, Kayla LC Yee,‘28, said Dean’s energy is infectious.

“She treats her actors like collaborators and pushes you to think and work outside the box,” LC Yee said. “She’s not afraid to be goofy, weird or silly. In fact, she sets up the rehearsal space to welcome and accept it.”

LC Yee said Dean leaves a positive impact on everyone. 

She also said Dean looks out for each of her students, inspiring them through her teaching process. 

“I feel like I found a place that needs me as much as I need it,” Dean said.