Lakeside School

by Matthew K. ’28

His first acting experience at Lakeside came in his senior year. “They were short on guys for ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie,’” Dimitri Woods says, “so they came to the choral class asking who could sing.” Woods could, and so he did, despite juggling a multitude of academic and extracurricular commitments. He liked it, auditioned, and got cast in “Burying Your Brother in the Pavement” — his second and last performance at Lakeside — and something about acting stuck for life.
He was no stranger, however, to the stage. A spoken word poet in Seattle’s Arts Corps., Woods started writing in middle school and did open mics at Lakeside and outside of school. He performed in the Seeds of Compassion Youth Ambassadors program, once speaking in front of an audience of more than 16,000, including Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. “That experience nuked any stage fright I might’ve had,” Woods says.
 

You're motivated by the things that you love. I am very, very lucky that I love my family and I love my work. — Dimitri Woods ’12

He was no stranger, however, to the stage. A spoken word poet in Seattle’s Arts Corps., Woods started writing in middle school and did open mics at Lakeside and outside of school. He performed in the Seeds of Compassion Youth Ambassadors program, once speaking in front of an audience of more than 16,000, including Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. “That experience nuked any stage fright I might’ve had,” Woods says.
That confidence shaped his success in acting, first at Santa Clara University and then in graduate school. Over the past decade, he has steadily carved out a place for himself in Seattle’s theater landscape, building a portfolio spanning works of Baldwin to contemporary comedy.

By day, Woods works in tech, where he has had operations leadership roles in several Seattle-based companies. He has a demanding schedule: early mornings, a full-time job, rehearsals that stretch late into the night, side jobs as a dialect coach. As for why he continues to do so, he says he feels a palpable rush in live performance, “kind of feeding you back energy that’s electrifying and pretty addictive.”