Sam Holland-Bunyan

Sam Holland-Bunyan is an award-winning director, actor and writer. She trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama as an actor, where her teachers included Chattie Salaman (Common Stock Theatre), Vasily Skorik and Nikolai Karpov (Maly Theatre) and Patsy Rodenburg (RSC). Following a lengthy career as a leading theatre actor (including National, Gate, Hampstead, Royal Court) she pivoted to writing and directing. She holds a master’s in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck, where she graduated with distinction and won the Peter Cheeseman Award for exceptional development and outstanding achievement.  

As a director, she has worked in the UK and internationally (including Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, Camden People’s Theatre, Etcetera in London and Lyric Theatre, Bridport, where she is an associate artist). She has several shows opening this year, including an Offie-nominated play at Edinburgh (Zoo and Gilded Ballon), HOME Manchester and The Dukes Theatre Lancaster. Her process aligns the philosophy of a ‘poorer’ theatre with Stanislavski’s active analysis, encouraging the actor to tune into their physicality and imagination and create work through an irreverent and playful lens. As an acting tutor, she takes a holistic approach which treats text as a physical catalyst, freeing performers from purely academic or cerebral interpretation.  

Students achieve a strong sense of physical truth and agency from these sessions and a reawakening and reconnection with their imagination. They feel at ease and open as performers and comfortable enough to let go and freely make discoveries they might not previously have thought possible.

“I remove traditional rehearsal room hierarchies and encourage ensemble building, create a safe environment for experimentation, discovery and play and prioritise embodying the text using devising and improvisational techniques to unlock the work.”