Laughter is the Best Medicine.
Sam Ethan Rubin was born in Rhinebeck in Upstate New York. His family moved to Northern California when he was eighteen months old and he grew up in Oakland. Doctors told his parents he would never talk, so his mother homeschooled him. His parents believed that laughter was one of the best medicines for healing and spent countless hours with him, watching Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Three Stooges, and cartoons while describing the characters and action. It was through this experience that he came to love performance. And language emerged. Sam’s dad is a videographer, so cameras were always a big part of Sam’s world. He loved to view life through a lens and made films in lieu of participating in Little League. When he was thirteen, at the L.A. Film Festival, he won the Target’s Dream in Color Award for directing one of his short films. He also grew up playing with puppets.
Early on, Sam had an astute music teacher who recognized that he has Perfect Pitch. He was accepted into Pacific Boychoir in second grade. At age nine, Sam tried out for Dickens’ The Christmas Carol as Tiny Tim at a local community college. Another stroke of luck connected him with a talented director—Clay David—who mentored Sam as an actor through his secondary education, creating roles for him, based on his musical ability and hiring him as “harmonies captain” for many shows.
Around age fifteen, Sam worked in a show (Rivets) where Peter Maleitzke, former artistic director of American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.) and founder of “Singing Without Limitation,” was the music director. After Rivets, Sam began private study with Mr. Maleitzke and has continued to train with him since. Sam also continued acting training at Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre until he moved to New York City in the Fall of 2017 to attend the Tom Todoroff Conservatory.
Sam played Rocket in The Rocket Family Chronicles web-series (The Autism Channel®). He was cast as Bobbe in Bobbe180, yet to be released. Most recently, he played Mookie in Betsy Franco’s The Art of Love, produced by Iris Torres and Tom Franco of Elysium Bandini Studios and Jerry in Max Sokoloff’s short film Just Like Fire.
In regional theatre, Sam has appeared in the Mountain Play in Marin County, California as Woof in HAIR, has been in several Shakespeare productions, including As You Like It with Marin Shakespeare Company where he sang a solo created for his character, and he has worked with Artship Dance Ensemble as well as New Conservatory Theatre (SF).
Sam has appeared solo in concert, singing Italian and German arias as well as Broadway musical repertoire. And, most recently, he sang in Maestro Donald Pippen’s Pocket Opera in Lucrezia Borgia, Daughter of the Regiment, La Boheme and King for a Day and with Lamplighter’s Theatre (SF) in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. Before this, he sang in Director Caroline Altman’s San Francisco Teen Opera Conservatory, playing Aeneus in Dido and Aeneus.
Sam has also studied mime with James Donlon and Leonard Pitt in San Francisco, Shakespeare text and “Freeing the Natural Voice” with Kristen Linklater in Orkney, Scotland, and Improv with Keith Johnston (Loose Moose Theatre) in Calgary, Canada. Sam is an engaging puppeteer and has a show in development for children with learning disabilities.