Sam and I went to the same school. He was three years older than me, which always set the template for our relationship going forward. He was the permanent older cousin I clicked with every few years. Always doing something bolder, brighter, better.
Sam pulled off a magic trick in a Catholic school in Toowoomba in the early 00s. He was a boy who was into drama and somehow indisputably heterosexual. That was a spectacle I never entirely managed to pull off.
15-year-old Sam had the same ingredients as Sam ten, fifteen, and twenty years on. He had swagger—presumably from a loving family—but it was a mesmerising self-confidence that would serve him well.
Anything was possible with Sam. It’s what made him a good producer. A flick of the eyebrows. A grin. A wink. Like he was gently flirting with everything. Playful and kind.
He went to USQ to study Acting. I followed a few years later in Theatre Studies. By the time I was in my third year, he’d actually gone and made theatre in Brisbane. He and a mate had started a theatre company and gotten in snug with Metro Arts. He’d fallen into a young crowd of theatre-makers who would go on to huge things: Amy Ingram, Tim Dashwood, Dan Evans, and more.
In my first year out, I was accepted into the Queensland Theatre Company Young Playwright’s Program. A year later, Sam decided to produce it and put it on at Metro Arts.
Because of Sam, I started a career in theatre. He played the lead role of Lazarus in Lazarus Won’t Get Out of Bed. Sam was the first actor to play a character based on me. Like the other actors that followed (Kevin Spink, Tom Yaxley, Jackson McGovern), he was like a straight-er, more handsome version of myself. He was who I wished to be.
Sam produced that show with a mate, Andy Barclay. That show was the first professional gig for many emerging careers, including Travis Dowling, Craig Wilkinson and Josh McIntosh.
While other people bitched about a lack of opportunity, Sam just made it happen. A bunch of us wouldn’t have jobs without him.
Lazarus Won’t Get Out of Bed generated enough noise to start some job opportunities emerging. About twelve months later Lewis Jones contacted me about April’s Fool. That show meant I graduated from ‘enthusiastic young person’ to ‘playwright’. When Sam came in to audition for one of the male roles, I felt undone.
I was surprised by this reversal in our status. I was behind the audition desk with Lewis. Sam got the role because he was a great actor.
He finished his audition and said farewell to us. ‘It’s a good script, and it’s important,’ he said. I remember that. It felt like a seal of approval from a big brother.
Sam eventually moved to New York. After April’s Fool, we lost touch. But he sent me a message when I got my first book published. He was very sweet about it. I also sent him a message of congratulations when his business took off.
That’s the story of Sam: he wins a green card lottery, goes to New York, and starts a successful business. Sunglasses and a smile in every picture.
Somewhere in there, my wife and I are gripped by a television series called Lenox Hill, which goes inside the lives of neurosurgeons dealing with brain cancer at a busy New York hospital. It’s a stunning documentary. And brain cancer is a fuck of an illness.
Memory: for no reason other than goodwill, Sam organises a private reading of Lazarus Won’t Get Out of Bed. It’s in the middle of a busy rehearsal period, but he asks his castmates to donate ninety minutes of their lives. The reading is for a mate of his, in hospital.
We gather around the bedside and read the play. Sam’s mate is in the hospital bed, about our age, mute, struck by something awful.
Sam’s long-term partner is a woman I haven’t had the good fortune to meet. But in February of 2023, Sam experienced a brain seizure. He was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital, and they found a tumour on an MRI scan. It is estimated he will have ten more years of life. He is diagnosed with Glioblastoma. A GoFundMe page is set up.
After an initial successful surgery, Sam gets engaged and returns to Australia for a bit.
I don’t see him, and I regret this. But he was consumed by closer friends at that time, and I felt out of place. I sent him a message, and he replied. We said we loved each other, and he said he felt blessed.
Memory: it’s in the middle of the rehearsals for April’s Fool. The play is based on a true story of the passing of a young teenage boy. Sam is narrating a scene that comes directly from the family, in the immediate aftermath of the boy’s passing.
Sam cracks up in the middle of the monologue. He apologises.
‘I don’t know why I’m laughing,’ Sam says.
‘It’s good!’ said Lewis, and I agreed. ‘Go with it. That’s real emotion.’
Sam laughed and then softened to tears. I never forgot that. I don’t really know why. I’d watch that moment countless times. He’d deliver it differently each time. But he’d mostly smile, then the smile would melt, and he’d hit something real. Sometimes, he pushed through and cried. Sometimes, he’d stop. Take a breath. Let it wash over him.
He’d close his eyes and look up at the lights. Exhale.
I’d exhale with him.
Oh Sam.
Sam passed last week. It’s been an awful few weeks for everyone who loved him. He fought. He was afraid. And brave. He was laughing and sad all at once.
I’ve never met large swathes of people who knew and loved Sam, especially in recent years. I know the last six months must have been terrifying and traumatic. But Sam was beautiful because his community was beautiful. In his final message to me he said how grateful he was to be reminded of how loved he was, how many people stood with him.
Memory.
The cold and dark alley beside the old Metro Arts. After a run. Opening night, perhaps. Or something more mundane. We are both tired. We hug. There is a lit cigarette perched in between his lips. He smells like beer and stage makeup.
‘Well done brother,’ he says.
‘You too,’ I reply.
You can donate to Sam’s GoFundMe page here, which helps the family and community with the numerous expenses that come with an abroad funeral and memorial. You can also donate to the Glioblastoma Research Foundation here.
That's really beautiful David. I didn't meet Sam until much later, once I moved to Brisbane in 2006. But I acted with him and then directed him on stage and screen and loved every minute of his energy and talent. He has been missed in Brisbane since he moved to NYC but has left an incredible mark on the SEQ arts scene.
This fucked me up. I only had the briefest window to meet him in NYC... he dragged us around to dive bars, the sort where punters would shit in the urinal and we'd laugh uproariously about how awful it was. I made him order me a "sex on the beach" from the disgruntled hipster and we danced on tables.