The band has yet to come on, but the crowd is deafening. A lot of screaming, a few criers, a lot of punters standing on their seats. Within the sanctuary of the sound desk, one of the crew hands me some earplugs. “Protect your ears – a lot of squealers in today,” he says, with a wink.
The Wiggles’ audiences are not known to hold back their enthusiasm, or ever put down the bubble guns, but there is a noticeably loud roar when a certain green man comes on stage: 31-year-old Dominic Field, AKA the Tree of Wisdom. After the show ends – their second of three that day alone, all sold out – Field shakes my hand as he’s wiping himself off. “I am a big sweater,” he says, affably. It is easy to see why.
As the Tree of Wisdom, Field’s wild dancing, with hip thrusts, mad shimmying and the occasional worm, has taken both the world’s stages and TikTok by storm, inspiring thousands of copycats – from giggling parents to US college kids on a night out.
On their recent tour of the US, Canada and the UK, Field spotted “like 10 trees in every audience – that was when I was like, I’ve made it”. He has unexpected fans in Khloé Kardashian, Jessie J and Robert De Niro – an ardent Wiggles fan of many years, who recently hugged Field backstage at one of their New York City shows. “He’s very softly spoken,” Field recalls. “He sat next to me and said in a very gentle tone, ‘I really appreciate what you do’.”
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Field is now so famous for his moves, he’s sometimes recognised even without the big green wig and leafy costume. “Usually playing the tree is a bad thing, you know what I mean?” he says. “Standing at the back in the school play. This is the complete opposite.”
Why the Wiggles have a tree in their lineup might be mystifying to some, until you remember that their entourage includes a pirate, a dinosaur, a dog and an octopus in a boater hat. How the tree became both wise and such a good dancer takes some explaining, but Field does his best:
A couple years ago, the Wiggles were on tour in Newfoundland, Canada, an island with strong cultural ties to Ireland, Scotland and Celtic traditions. The locals seemed to love it when they played folk songs – the Wiggles are big on covers – so Anthony Field, the OG blue Wiggle and Field’s uncle, suggested they perform Rattlin’ Bog, an Irish song that speeds up with each verse and, most crucially for this story, is about a tree.
The group’s musicians were so intently focused on learning to play the notoriously difficult song that Anthony only gave his nephew brief instructions: you’re the tree, dance onstage, do whatever you want.
“And I was like, ‘Great,’” Field says, laughing.
At first Field’s moves were “quite tame”. But as he got used to Rattlin’ Bog’s fast pace he began performing moves he had, in his words, perfected in Sydney’s nightclubs. “As I got comfortable with the song and started having more fun, the more phones I started to see come out,” he says. On YouTube alone, Rattlin’ Bog has now been watched 9m times.
So Field was now a tree and his uncle had big plans for him. “Anthony called and said, ‘We’re going to expand the tree character!’” Field remembers. “Who knows how his brain works, but he was like ‘You’re the Tree of Wisdom! You are this all-knowing tree! So that’s how it started – then it just got bigger and bigger, and funnier and funnier.”
Field has never had any professional dance training – which shows, but not in a negative way; I suspect it is his buzzed uncle vibe that people love so much. “I’m always that guy at a wedding who needs to get the dancefloor started,” he says. I suspect you knew how to do the worm before you joined the Wiggles, I say. “Oh, I was worming before I was walking,” he says.
Field’s career trajectory has inspired the birth of the term “nepo tree”, but the Wiggles is very much a family business, albeit one worth an estimated $50m. His father, Paul, was in rock band the Cockroaches with two of the four original Wiggles – his brother Anthony and Jeff Fatt. But in 1988, Paul’s first child, Bernadette, died of SIDS at eight months, which devastated the group. Anthony left the band to study early education, then founded the Wiggles, bringing in Fatt, Murray Cook and Greg Page; their first album was dedicated to Bernadette. Paul became their manager in 1996.
These days, Field’s older brother, Luke, is the Wiggles’ manager, while his cousin Lucia is a blue Wiggle like her father, Anthony, and his wife, Stephanie, is a Wiggles dancer who occasionally plays Dorothy the Dinosaur and Bubbles the Mermaid. Field himself made his first Wiggles appearance when he was just two, in the Wiggles video Wake Up Jeff!. The Wiggles have been part of his life for 30 years and counting.
“When I was a kid, I didn’t see Anthony as a Wiggle. He was always just my uncle but everyone knew him, which was cool,” he recalls.
Did he ever find the Wiggles uncool? “No, I loved it. Actually, on my first day at high school, dad dropped me off while listening to a new album because it was his job. The Wiggles were pumping out the car and that was the only moment I’ve ever been like, ‘Can you just turn that down a bit?’”
At 19, Field began working as a stage technician for the Wiggles. Over the years, Anthony would encourage his nephew to sing and join them on stage; eventually he was stepping in for Anthony and Simon the red Wiggle at live shows or filling in as Captain Feathersword. And now he’s beloved by children and parents around the world for playing a groovy tree – an unexpected, but welcome outcome.
Can you ever have a bad day as a dancing, singing tree? “Life happens, of course – but as soon as you get to work and you’re singing about hot potatoes, it’s really, really, really hard to have a bad day,” he says.
In fact, the Tree of Wisdom is now so big that the Wiggles next arena tour is named for him, with an album to go with – and yes, it is all tree-related songs and yes, it includes a cover of Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits. “We’re gonna make sure that every year nine dance in every world is doing the Nutbush,” Field says. “We’re trying to get some tree-nagers.”
Is it strange getting so much attention now? “No, I love it. I encourage it all. Honestly, people with little ones are probably watching the Wiggles 24 hours a day. When we met De Niro, his partner said, ‘I feel like I know you guys, but I’ve never met you.’”
And these days, he’s loved for a character that has become entirely his own. “I’m just being myself – dressed as a tree. And people seem to be connecting with it. I’m proud of that. It’s been really cool to see it grow,” he pauses, then adds, cheekily: “Pun intended.”