Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Education: New York University / Experimental Theatre Wing
Select Credits: Jack the Bird (Laura, Theatre for the New City), Red Wednesday (Samar, New Ohio), Squid Out of Water (a glittery purple squid, Jalopy Theatre).
Why theater?: Because it's the only medium that encourages my particular brand of insanity.
Who do you play in Too Many Lenas 3?: I play Self-Depicted Lena, originally dubbed 'Meta Lena'. She is the ultimate tautology, weaving her way through catacombs of self-irreverential language to paint a pretty picture of a person she may or may not actually be. Her catchphrase is, "What work?"
Tell us about Too Many Lenas 3: It's a farm-to-table menage-à-six, a pastiche of artisanal kitsch with a touch of lingering self-doubt. Basically, it's a play inspired by Lena Dunham.
What is it like being a part of Too Many Lenas 3?: I'm up to my ears in it... like to the point where I can't stop spouting Lena-isms in the street. I guess it's a testament to the show's encyclopedic handle on millennial self-dramatization, that any and every life situation inspires a line from the show. We all do it in rehearsal, too: the language of the Lena-verse (both verbal and spiritual) is seductive as hell. It makes the everyday sublime.
What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?: Postmodern dance/theatre. I love physically-based work that uses the body as it exists in time and space, rather than as a mime-y storytelling thing. I love humor stripped of sentimentality. Language stripped of sense. Presence without hubris, critique without lecture... I mean, essentially, I love clowns. It's something like... watching a journey to know less onstage, which I rarely see in American theater. As an artist, inspiration-wise, I can't possibly name everything. For a while now, it's been a book called Nonsense, by the ineffable Susan Stewart. But in the theatre/dance world, big-ticket items include the Glass/Wilson/Childs' Einstein on the Beach, Richard Foreman's Old Fashioned Prostitutes, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Mary Overlie's concept of the Viewpoints, the teachings of Merry Conway, the comedic stylings of Monty Python... has everyone stopped reading yet? I'm thirsty.
Any roles you’re dying to play?: A Tony-award winning one! Just kidding. More like, whatever character gets to be levitated in a harness. So: Peter Pan, Elphaba, Dumbo, that guy in Mary Poppins who dies laughing... maybe David Copperfield's understudy, as long as I don't have to do the escape trick in the aquarium. Wait, or was that David Blaine?
What’s your favorite showtune?: I'm probably supposed to say "Gimme, Gimme" from Thoroughly Modern Millie. But the guy who plays Silas on Showtime's Weeds was Melchior in Spring Awakening on Broadway, and I'm pretty sure we fell in love when he sang "All That's Known" to me in the second row in 2011. So it's a tie.
If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?: I'd really like to make something with Small Wooden Shoe, a zany little "theatre" company based in Nova Scotia, Canada. That, or Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. Either to get into some seriously cerebral theatre (with the former), or learn to make a room of 450 people laugh at the same time (with the latter).
Who would play you in a movie about yourself and what would it be called?: Ideally, a young Sally Field would play me in a silent 80s dance film called, "Now is the Winter of our Disco Tents" . If it can't happen, I get it, I'll take Ellen Page.
What show have you recommended to your friends?: Zimmerman & De Perrot's Hans was Heiri at BAM, last fall. Hands-down one of the best shows I have ever seen in my life: a hauntingly carnivalesque romp through a topsy turvy landscape. Literally, there was a four-quadrant house with no fourth wall (you win this time, metaphor) and it spun while the actors fell from room to room, walking on walls and changing their 'orientations'—in every sense of the word—as their boundaries were constantly being redefined. Imagine the scene where they take a yoga class. HELLO, THEATRE.
What’s the most played song on your iTunes?: Okay, so it's "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White T's. But only because I used to sleep to a sad tweeny playlist that I had on repeat! After those songs, it's "Semi-Charmed Life".
What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?: Crying while pooping. Yeah. Something about performing despair in the act of defecation is not only cathartic, but also dramatically stimulating. I call it "character work". And then I ask myself, "What work?"
What’s up next?: I'm playing Jane Eyre in Theater Reconstruction Ensemble's upcoming production, You on the Moors, Now. It's a play by Jaclyn Backhaus based on four different romance novels by 19th/20th century women. It's a grand, dreamy thing and Volume One is coming to HEREarts Center July 23rd-25th! http://www.reconstructionensemble.org/
Follow Sam on Twitter for more wanderings of a cross-border brain: www.twitter.com/ahoysamantha. When not in the throes of her art-making, Sam also writes for a Brooklyn blog you should kinda definitely check out: www.brokelyn.com