Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Stacy.
Hi Anna, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was raised by two creative scientists so was pretty much doomed to a life of career-splitting from the start. My dad is a mad scientist type who would culture colorful molds in the fridge; my mom is a nurse-turned-educator whose talent at starting an IV is rivaled only by her watercolor skills. I grew up playing violin and piano, building bottle rockets, and forcing my brother to work on homemade pageants with me. I loved the sciences and arts equally, and when it came time for me to apply to college, I felt pigeonholed by the exclusivity of arts conservatories and science colleges, so attended Brown University, whose curriculum revolves around interdisciplinary exploration. I majored in Theatre Arts and Biological Anthropology, and when I wasn’t in class, I was almost always in rehearsal or in a performance for an upcoming theatrical production.
While at Brown, I was accepted to medical school through an early application program at the Icahn School of Medicine called FlexMed, in which would-be medical students with significant interests outside of the sciences can secure early admission in order to focus on their other passions, with the goal of creating more well-rounded doctors. Thus afforded the luxury to explore, I began to be more involved in both film and classical theatre towards the end of college. I went on to study at Shakespeare & Co and worked briefly in museum design before beginning medical school. As a student, I was a clinic manager and student leader of the Mount Sinai Human Rights Program and performed research on radiation exposure in Fukushima, Japan. Outside the hospital, I continued to act professionally and was a producer on a network docuseries about critical care at Bellevue Hospital. I am now a resident physician of Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and continue my involvement in the arts as an artistic associate for theatre companies Match: Lit and Eastline Theatre.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating to those working in healthcare, and in a different way, to those working in the performing arts. As an early-career physician, I was very unused to the volume of death, dying, and suffering I was quickly exposed to in the first years of the pandemic but had very little time to process or debrief given the volume of patients and the acuity of their conditions. Initially, I was without one of my major coping mechanisms: theatre and film. Once it became possible to engage with these again, I found I was eager to address themes relevant to our shared trauma these last several years through both drama and comedy.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In 2020, frequent artistic collaborator Nicole Martinez and I co-created the comedy web series Dead-Enders, which follows a group of doomsday preppers on an online forum in the early days of the zombie apocalypse. Season 1 was shot remotely over Zoom given the pandemic and received several film festival awards for Best Web Series. This inspired a second season, which was fully produced in-person and is now in the film festival circuit. Its talented creative team includes directors Mark DePasquale, Gracie Giffune, Dani Hanks, Reed Yurman, and Katie Colwell, and Directors of Photography Katie Colwell and Rutuja Sawant. The series’s original score was composed by my brother, Charles Stacy. The ensemble features actors Daniel Cabrera, Joe Raik, Nicole Martinez, Leslie Field, Laurel Andersen, and Regina Renée Russell, and myself.
I am so proud that we were able to harness the challenges of the pandemic, both logistical and emotional, in a way that allows us to laugh while reflecting on the difficulties of the last several years. The show truly looks and sounds spectacular: gorgeous shot composition thanks to Colwell and Sawant alongside stellar sound design by Grant Furgiuele create a vivid world through which the characters meet in-person for the first time and attempt to navigate a world that has changed so much.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.annastacy.com
- Instagram: @aceystacy
- Youtube: vimeo.com/deadenders2 (Vimeo, not YouTube – this is where to watch Dead-Enders!)
- Other: dead-enders.com
Image Credits
Jeff Paik Robert Caplan
