Biography
Anna Straker is an Australian multi-disciplinary artist specialising in puppetry and visual theatre. With almost twenty years experience working in stage and screen as a performer and maker, she is known for her allegorical works of ‘fierce originality’ and grotesque whimsy, while providing her knowledge as puppetry consultant for multiple productions and companies.
In 2025 Straker completed work on two feature films, a children’s television series and a regional tour. Performing as the lead puppeteer of the title characters in “Fing!” and “Allen”, taking the roles of puppeteer, consultant, and set and costume designer for "Rainbow Bop”, and taking her signature shows “The Boy Who Ate Teeth”, “Umami Mermaids” and multiple stilt characters on the road for The Crackup Sisters for the past five years.
Straker won the state-wide industry Matilda Award for audio-visual design in 2016 for her original illustrations in Queensland Theatre’s blockbuster production of ‘The Wider Earth’, for which she was also lead puppeteer. For her sell-out debut production of her gothic feminist fairytale, ‘Umami Mermaids’, commissioned by Brisbane Festival last year, Anna’s handmade and recycled sets and puppets earned her a 2018 Matilda Award nomination for best set design. In 2019 Anna had her busiest years, designing five new Queensland works, including ‘‘Squad Goals’ (Share House) ‘The Revisionist’ (Refraction Theatre), ‘Genesis’ (A Very Theatre Company) and ‘Rockpocalypse’ (Jess Lamb).
Anna’s solo puppet show, “The Boy Who Ate Teeth’ was a critically-acclaimed success at the 2017 Brisbane Festival, and has regularly toured to festivals since, such as Woodford Folk Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Short and Sweet Festival. Street theatre and roving has been a staple part in Anna’s performance career, developing multiple characters and providing valuable knowledge of audience engagement.
She was an instrumental founding member of Dead Puppets Society, contributing to and performing in “The Wider Earth”, “The Timely Death of Victor Blott”, “The Harbinger”, “Argus”, “Laser Beak Man” and “The Last Tree in the City”. Anna was the puppeteer of Poppy on the children’s television series, “Pipsqueaks” (2013-2014). Straker has worked for companies including the Screen Queensland, The Crackup Sisters, Commonwealth Games, Cirque du Soleil, Erth, Beyond Productions.
Straker’s extensive career in all forms of entertainment and endless variations of audiences has resulted in a unique and important knowledge of audience engagement and awareness which she endeavours to uphold at every opportunity and hopes to help others in it too.
Anna is currently living in Melbourne, Aus, applying her experience as a cabaret host and visual art teacher at a paint and sip studio. Audience feedback suggests she provides “by far the best fun you’ll ever have”.
