As she nears the end of her senior year, Mitra Samei has been forced to reflect upon her experiences in the theater department over the past four years. Having been involved in almost every show since her freshman year, including the virtual shows held during remote learning, she has had the opportunity to collaborate and learn from an “extremely supportive community,” as well as further develop her passion. While she has dabbled in technical theater as well, Samei has most of all loved being on stage as part of the musicals, particularly as one of Charity’s closest friends and fellow taxi dancer Helene in “Sweet Charity” last month. Next year, she is incredibly excited to major in drama at New York University.
How did you become obsessed with acting?
I’ve been acting pretty much my entire life—ever since I was eight years old. My first play was the “Hobbit,” and I was a dwarf. I started doing summer camps that were a couple weeks long, and that ultimately began my theater addiction. In middle school, I helped with the plays, and I started doing musical theater outside of school. My passion really grew at the end of eighth grade during the transition to high school. I was in a production of “Beauty and the Beast,” and I was Mrs. Potts. It was my first time ever having a lead role and it was really, really magical. That production made me really serious about theater and changed the way I thought about it.
What do you like most about musical theater, especially as it compares to regular acting?
The combination of movement, making music and acting is just everything that I love. It’s like, ‘How can I not love it?’ Acting, singing and dancing are my three favorite things, so it’s perfect for me. But what I especially admire about musical theater is that it combines these different forms of art into something very powerful, that it’s almost overwhelming from an audience perspective. It takes so much technical mastery, practice and dedication to have the vocal technique and the choreography and the acting all together. Musical theater really combines all the different sides of yourself. As an actor in musical theater, you have to take care of your vocal instrument and keep your body strong and vigorous through constant practice.
What’s the greatest challenge you’ve faced in your acting career, and how did you overcome it?
My biggest challenge has been my vocal injury. I was diagnosed with a vocal module, which is basically a bump on my vocal folds caused by years of using my voice a lot. When I was young and performing in choirs before I started taking private voice lessons, I had improper vocal technique. And my speaking voice is also not very well supportive of my breath because I talk really fast, and I have a lot to say. My biggest challenge is that my voice gets tired very quickly, so I have to do vocal therapy. It’s very difficult because I have to treat my voice like a commodity, like a resource that can run out. It’s a resource that I have to be very careful with and take care of, and that is a huge, huge obstacle for me as a singer and as an actor because my voice is very important.
To overcome this challenge, I’ve had to be so thoughtful about how I use my voice, and it has made me think about my voice differently. I’ve had to make boundaries by asking my choir or a cappella leader for vocal rests, or not hanging out with friends because I need to rest my voice for a show the next day. I’ve made sure that I’m taking care of my voice, and I do think that my voice will heal, and someday I won’t have to worry about it. This summer I did the clinic for PlayMakers Summer Youth Conservatory, and we had several shows every day and when we weren’t performing, I had to rest my voice completely, just no talking, no singing, no speaking, no whispering, clearing throat, humming—nothing for those days except for the show. That was the only way that my voice lasted through the shows, since we had rehearsals every day. So that’s a really big obstacle for me, and while I would say I’ve had a lot of other obstacles that I’ve definitely overcome, this one I’m still in the process of overcoming. But I’m taking a lot of really important steps.
Photos courtesy of Mitra Samei
