Music finds a new beat

ANNA SAMSON

ACTOR (BDrama 2011)

PICTURE: CHRIS HOPKINS.

Anna Samson’s youth belies the breadth of stage roles she has mastered since graduating from the VCA five years ago.

Having performed with Australia’s major theatre companies and appeared in plays by Brendan Cowell and Joanna Murray-Smith (BA(Hons) 1985) among others, she co-starred recently with Colin Friels in a Melbourne Theatre Company production of David Hare’s Skylight.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

“For me the highlight of Skylight is the quality of the writing I got to work with,” she says.

“I made dear friendships and gained some surprising recognition for Birdland at Melbourne Theatre Company. I’ve always adored working for the MTC,and Red Stitch, too — an important little theatre and a piece of the puzzle that is my career. And, of course, there was the time I was in a film and met my now fiance.”

CAREER AND INFLUENCES

Influences are “a patchwork of people, places and things” for Anna: “Teachers who inspired me, friends whose work and way of viewing the world surprises me. Artists, performances and people that try to be brave, to do something different or something pure. My friend Olga, my first drama teacher, the Schaubuhne theatre company, my dad, Winnie the Pooh, my talented mates, Ralph Fiennes …”

WHAT BEING AN ACTOR MEANS TO ME

“Acting is the one area of storytelling I felt I was most gifted in,” she says.

“I’ve always found the theatre to be a place of great freedom and magic. I’m still finding myself in the world and that can be scary; finding yourself onstage always felt a little more comfortable. I think being able to go out under some lights and find the way another human thinks, somehow filtering it all through your own truth, is magic.”

A UNIVERSITY MEMORY

“My friend Tom Hobbs (BDrama 2012), a classmate, created what can only be described as a miracle of performance — he became the personification of Vegemite. It had to be seen to be believed.”