welcome to my website!
My name is Anika Waco and I'm a film, TV, and stage actor. I just graduated in May 2022 from Elon University (NC), with my BFA in Acting and BA in Arts Administration and minors in Spanish and Business Administration. I'm from Chicago-ish: Oak Park, IL (locals, you can decide if that counts or not). The city planted the seed of my love for acting through summer theatre camp, and the industry here nurtured & refined that love through companies like Steppenwolf. In January of 2023, I made the move to Los Angeles, and I'm so excited to experience a whole new side of the entertainment industry (and escape Chicago winters). You can usually find me blasting music with the car windows down (most likely Taylor Swift - ask me about the time I met her, craziest story I'll ever tell), trying to be a good plant mama, studying Survivor gameplay, cooking some sort of pasta dish, watching Lady Bird, or crying over how beautiful the sky is. If I wasn’t so in love with performing, I would probably be off the grid in the mountains somewhere living solely off of s'mores, or traveling the country in a camper van.
After spending elementary and middle school summers and evenings in musical theatre rehearsals, I found my performance niche in my high school's production season of eight plays a year. I was able to focus solely on acting, from Mary Zimmerman's abstract work to period pieces like Sense and Sensibility and physical comedies like The 39 Steps - and I realized that this was what I needed to do for the rest of my life. One of my favorite acting experiences has been Elon's production of The Wolves and the magic that came from a group of women exploring the intricacies of unfiltered teenage girlhood. I've also gotten to dive into acting for the camera through work with Elon's Cinema and Television Arts program, and have loved continuing to tell stories for both the stage and the screen alongside incredible independent filmmakers out in The Real World.