Sam Locke

Sam is an actor, director, puppeteer, special effects artist, and musician living in Chicago, IL. Sam works as a Resident Director and Teacher at the Annoyance Theater. Sam started his adventure back in Rockwood, TN, where, at the tender age of 19, he stumbled upon a path leading him to Chicago in order to study improvisational comedy with the Second City. Since then Sam has trained at both the Second City Conservatory and the Annoyance Theater to hone his craft, been cast in dozens of shows in Chicago, and has toured around the country performing and teaching workshops in both improvisational comedy and puppetry at numerous comedy festivals in places ranging from: Boston to Seattle, Alaska down to Florida, Des Moines to Las Vegas, and quite a few places in between. Aside from Acting, Sam is an experienced director, who works as a Resident Director at The Annoyance Theater and teaches classes for the theater's training program and has lead workshops in both improvisational acting and puppetry all over the country. Sam has also directed numerous shows with the Annoyance Theater including multiple remounts of Splatter Theater, several short original one-acts as part of the Wednesday night Triple Feature program, and the all ages show series: "Weirdos". Sam's short film directorial debut was "The Fiendish Machinations of Lex Luthor" which achieved several awards and was selected by multiple film festivals Sam is also a master puppet builder and puppeteer, having designed and created original puppets for Weirdos, The Annoyance Christmas Pageant, It Came From Kentucky, as well as for the production of Purple Rain the Musical at the Neo Futurarium. Sam is also a skilled practical special effects technician honing his skills over decades working on Splatter Theater at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago In addition Sam has channeled his knack for creating characters in to voice acting, for several projects including the animated pilot "The Lambs to the Slumber" On top of all of this, Sam is a talented mandolin player who has performed with Southern Comfort, Silverfish and the Country Doctors and has helped create original music for the following shows: Arm Soup, Grabass, Wasteland: A Night of Mandolin Happiness and others, and Starlight Radio Dreams.