Where Grief Sits
Where does Grief sit? Life, Death, and Grief come to life in a mosaic of these deeply personal experiences through poetry, dance, and song. Sampson’s solo performance of Where Grief Sits premiered at the 2024 PortFringe Festival.
What people are saying
Where Grief Sits by Sampson Spadafore uses fluid movement, singing and emotionally raw poetry to bring into relief the deep hurts of modern society. Spadafore embodies Death, Grief and a soul dealing with the comfort, familiarity and irritable violence of Grief itself. Relatable and vulnerable, this piece stands strong in its poise, lyricism and important subject matter. If you want to challenge binary thinking, experience the pain of doomscrolling and feel challenged to still find hope in the darkness, this is the show for you.
Submitted by Tarra Haskell: PF24 Independent Review Team
Embodying several characters, creative movement, real news clips, and goosebumps inducing original songs, you are invited to explore what it means to be human in ‘Where Grief Sits’. From the start, performer Sampson Spadafore elegantly walks the audience through the realities of grief after losing someone you love. An often difficult topic to speak about with persons unprepared for public emotion, Sampson carefully guides listeners through smart choices of this emotion’s expression. Gracefully taking the audience through the various stages we experience after loss, be prepared to explore all the feels from beginning to end.
Submitted by Christina W. Richardson: PF24 Independent Review Team
PortFringe Pop-Up ‘24: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
POP-UP is the annual fundraiser for PortFringe – Maine’s Fringe Festival. Performance Artists, chosen by random lottery, are each assigned one section of a classic work — which must be performed in just a few minutes (and with zero communication with the other scenes). No creative limitations, no application fees, … and no full-company rehearsals! That’s right – the first time the show happens, in scene order, is on opening night, in front of a live audience!
Sampson was chosen to perform chapters 1-5 of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He chose to tell the story from the perspective of the monster. Sampson also created the costume and soundscape.
Learn more and donate to PortFringe here.
Belfast Poetry Festival
Sampson performed at the Belfast Poetry Festival, a collaborative performance with artist and musician Greg Jamie. With poetry at the center, Sampson and Greg combined their words, visual art, music, and dance to create a truly moving piece. Sampson was inspired by the landscapes and nude figures in Greg’s work. With that in mind, the duo transported the audience into the middle of the woods to bare witness to the body, life, ritual, and death.
Stay tuned for the recording on the Belfast Poetry Festival website and to be aired on local TV.
T4T: Theatre 4 trans
Sampson premiered this original piece at the PortFringe Festival on the East Bayside of Portland, Maine, and then relaunched a work-in-progress version for the first ever Maine Mini Fest at SPACE Gallery. This performance is their exploration of the ways trans bodies and narratives could exist in theatre. Their performance included improvised dance to the tune of their own poetry, as well as musical theatre songs that are traditionally written for cisgender characters.
Awards
2023 PortFringe Committee “Espirit de Corps” Award
Achievement in Performance, Achievement in Writing, #ThisIsFringe Award
What people are saying
Sampson Spadafore’s “Theatre 4 Trans” was a last-minute addition to the PF23 lineup, but an incredibly welcome and appropriate one to join “Life Goes On” for an all-trans ticket at High Fidelity on the first day of Pride month. Spadafore opens by asking us “what do you do with a liminal body?” — and then he proceeds to show us. The liminal body dances while poetry is recited in the background. The liminal body sings show tunes, their voice echoing through the space in such a way that one cannot help but share in their fierce & resonant joy. As Spadafore regales the audience with an arrangement of original poems as well as show tunes ranging from Fun Home to Funny Girl, we get to share in an even more expansive range of emotion & experience – fantasy, joy, fear, survival. If you want to see a queer show this Fringe but you’re not sure whether you want to laugh or cry, go see T4T – you’ll get both.
Submitted Anonymously, PF23 Independent Review Team
PONY
Sampson makes his Portland Theater Festival debut with his performance of HEATH in Pony by Sylvan Oswald, directed by Jess Barbagallo.
You can watch the full performance here.
Check out this article in the American Theater Magazine: Exuberant and Wild: The Long, Evolving Ride of Sylvan Oswald’s ‘Pony’
what people are saying
Theatre Festival’s ‘Pony’ meditates on issues of gender, sex and love | Portland Phoenix
“Oswald also modernizes ‘Woyzeck’ in presenting transmasculine and queer experiences in an array of relations, which this fine cast makes rich and dynamic. These actors manifest their characters’ longings and wounds in beautifully various ways – from Stell’s fervid overtures and deflated retreats to the glints of stoic Cav’s ambivalence about never having “pushed” to use pronouns other than “she/her.”
“Sampson Spadafore, an ebullient beam of light in a pink-and-blue flamingo shirt.”
Lifesongs Project
In a matter of less than 10 days, Sam co-wrote a song for Palaver String’s Lifesongs Project in honor of sharing stories for Pride Month. Lifesongs Project was created 5 years ago to “celebrates and shares the experiences of LGBTQ people in our community through the medium of songwriting and music; the results are powerful stories of love, loss, courage, and affirmation.”
Sampson’s song Ready for the Revolution was created to inspiring revolutionary change for the Queer community and beyond. Check out the performance here. (Skip to 12:08 to see Sampson)
He is now the Coordinator of the Lifesongs Project. Stay tuned for 2024’s Celebration concert!
Listen to the fully realized track on Spotify, or wherever you listen to music!
A Piece of the Universe Monologue
From the Boston University Trans Monologue Workshop
This was a collaborative workshop for and by Trans performing artists to create monologues specifically for Trans artists as a part of Liana Giangiulio’s thesis project. This monologue was performed by Sam Spadafore and Socks Whitmore as a single being split in two. The scene was directed by Annika Prager and written by Liana Gianguilio. The film was edited by Sampson Spadafore. You can learn more and read the monologues here.