Sam Hunter
Sam Hunter hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he began with high school and community theatre. Early on, he was attracted to things like Bat Boy: The Musical and Samuel Beckett, as well as Shakespeare and Durang. Comedically his major influences were the Marx Bros., Steve Martin, Freakazoid, and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. When he arrived at UC San Diego and met his long-time mentors and the other members of the Departure, he became very interested in rooting out the heart of performance: how are these comedic and dramatic influences working on the same thing? How are performance media similar and different? How do we create and present in a way that makes others want to participate? When he critiques his own work, the voices he hears most strongly are those of Tom Dugdale, Kim Rubinstein, and Gabor Tompa, though he yearns for the day when the only voice he hears is his own.
Sam is the former artistic director of the Hungry River Theatre Company, in Ridgecrest, CA. He founded the company in 2011 and from that experience has realized the supreme importance of people in the room, and the complete irrelevance of an institution without individuals to power it. This principle guides the building of The West, which he hopes will become a home for all artists, and awaken the artistic in everyday life. Here’s his portfolio.
Things that make Sam shake, rattle, and roll include but are not limited to:
- Great apes
- Seeing people in their cars, all just following the lines and not having anything to do with anybody
- Deep rhythms
- Shouting over noise
- Waiting to talk to high status people
- That half barbaric twang
- Bag pipe sound
- Brick
- Argyle
- Knit ties
- Bow ties
- Interrobangs
- Historical and scientific lies
- “This morning he is particulalrly self-concious about the length of the fuzz on his ears”
- Rilo Kiley’s “Arms Outstretched”
- Albino animals
- Lady Gaga
- Bears
- Miniaturized technology
- The Legend of the Whitestag
- People turning into Animals/Animals turning into people
- My family tree
- When trees drop their fruit on the sidewalk and nobody cleans it up all season.
- The 20th World Scout Jamboree
- 2010 Steppenwolf Ensemble at CSU Fresno
- Bureacratic powerlessness
- The Human Brain
- The Human Mind
- Foreign languages
- Campfires
- Scout songs
- Mountain lakes and rivers
- Redwood trees
- Hydration
- 1991 Volvo 240 Station Wagons
- Call and response
- Humane zoos and aquaria
- Piles of junk
- Chekhov on being a great artist
- Martin Luther King Jr.’s speaking voice
- Maxim Gorky on Chekhov
- The Facebook writings of Devin O’Neill
- The Marx Brothers
- Bill Irwin
- Lonely railroad tracks
- Seeing the sun rise after being up all night
- Waking up before sunrise
- A lot of a single type of object
- The inherent preference in memory
- Being on a roof
- The full moon
- Dancing in the desert under the full moon
- Falling down
- Farts
- Vehicles powered by farts
- Chocolate
- Cake
- Chocolate cake
- Interior decoration outdoors
- San Francisco
- Boats
- Solo clarinet