Margo Mayhem & Samson Night

Laurie Beechman Theater, Hell’s Kitchen

Margo Mayhem & Samson Night - Laurie Beechman Theater, Hell's Kitchen

Margo:
So there's a big Broadway fundraiser every year called Broadway Bears. It's like a huge event. It's 200 dancers. Everyone donates their time. If you win the whole thing, you get like a crown and a sash. I was so close to winning the whole thing, but someone beat me.

Samson:
And that someone was me.

Margo:
And it was his first time doing the show. He had never done it before. But, you know, also, a black man has never won. So that was a really big deal, and a straight man has never won. So that's a whole thing. Whatever. But I was really mad about it. I had been kind of clocking him on the internet because, we were neck and neck for a long time, and then he just beat me. I literally went up to him backstage and I was like, “So you're…” And he goes, “Yeah, I know who you are.” And that's literally how we met. Like, that was the first time. Our numbers were back to back in the show you were performing in. So we kept running into each other.

Samson:
And I asked her out for pancakes.

Margo:
Yes. That the day after.

Samson:
The day after. So the short answer to your question ‘How do we know each other?’, we’re partners.

Margo:
Yes. Sorry. That right. I forget that's not a thing people know. Yes. Yes. We are together. We live together. We work together. We are partners in all the senses. I forget that people don't know us. So, like that's a thing. Yes, yes, yes. We are partners and partners.

Samson:
The first part, during that morning, before my matinee, we had pancakes. Then the second part of our day, that same day, she said, “I'm leaving town for a couple of days. I really want to see you again after your show. Meet me down here at The Slipper Room…”

Margo:
The part he's not telling you is, one, I got really drunk that afternoon. I went up to a friend's house and I, like, drank an entire bottle of wine by myself. So I was like, “Hey, I'm going out of town and I really want to kiss you before I leave town…” is, I'm pretty sure, what I said, because we had we hadn't that morning.

And so I literally was like, “I need to kiss you before I leave town. Come to The Slipper Room.” He's like, “What's The Slipper Room?” I'm like, “Don't worry about it.”

Samson:
So I meet her at The Slipper Room, and that was actually my first time experiencing burlesque at the outside of like Broadway Bears, like period.

Margo:
Or like, videos.

Samson:
Except for like videos and stuff. So we met and had like the second part of our first date there and she had already been performing. Then after about, I guess, about six months of us dating, she asked me to do a duet with her. We went from it's like literally, like our entire lives were either at our Broadway show or in a burlesque show.

And that was pretty much, you know, eight times a week plus burlesque.

Margo:
Plus burlesque. So we were working all the time.

Samson:
Yeah, but so that was a huge pivot to just not having any kind of creative outlet, especially early on, is like, you know, we were creating content that was like when everybody was really excited about, you know, singing videos and stuff like that. We, you know, we created a couple of things together that way and performed some online concerts and stuff like that.

But it was like, I feel like the burlesque community really did a great job of pivoting immediately for virtual shows, more so than like the Broadway and Theater theater communities.

Margo:
We've been doing completely different acts because it felt weird to do something that we did in a stage setting in this very intimate, tiny space. And so we basically like took costume pieces we already had and some ideas that we already had for other stuff and built all new things basically for the pandemic.

Samson:
As far as everything, especially that happened over the summer, I got booked for a show and it was all prerecorded acts. Then Breonna Taylor's murder happened and it felt so insignificant to be putting out the show with that at that time that the cast, you know, we got together and I think there were two people of color in the cast.

And so the producer kind of deferred to us on whether or not we should continue on with the show or, you know, mix it for now and then have it come back later. This other producer put out a statement that we crafted together, and both Slipper Room and this other show donated money to social justice causes.

So there has been a lot of that. But also, I ended up getting cast in a show where I was so stunted, and it was already something that I wasn't used to doing. I was supposed to create a piece to a rock and roll number, and that's not really my jam, that's not really what I do.

But, you know, I was excited, I loved the two people who were putting it together, and it's something that I was excited for. The challenge. But with everything that was going on, I was just stunted.

Margo:
I think that was the Ahmaud Arbery week.

Samson:
Yeah, it was. I was just stunted and literally the day before I had to turn in the video, I decided to do Lenny Kravitz, Always on the Run and make my piece a statement of what it is like to be a black man in today's society and be expected to put on the face, to, you know, bring joy to everybody else, and then also what it's like to actually shoulder the responsibility of all of that and just exist, you know, without having to worry about or always having to worry about having a target on your back, which was what the thing was. I don't think that I ever want to show that piece. It's like…

Margo:
It’s really powerful, but it's really hard to watch.

Samson:
It exists in such a specific space for me, and yet it was really hard to continue to perform continue to put out art that is supposed to bring levity to, you know, to a dark time that everybody's experiencing, but also be honest and true to like what it is I'm experiencing.

I write poetry and stuff, but I don't think that I've ever used burlesque to do that. That was hard.

Margo:
I will also say that Sam also did something that was really cool for Juneteenth last year is how his production company got started. He and two other burlesque performers who live in the Pacific Northwest and Chicago, essentially, they ultimately decided to put together the show for Juneteenth, and it was this ridiculously epic all black cast of like, sick performers.

Like it was so unreal and they made something like $16,000 that they donated a bunch of money to, you know, social justice causes and various things. And that was like, it was really it was really cool to watch, you know, because it did take like a really rough, weird time, and then they made this, like, celebratory art out of, you know, that it wasn't about like, like there is a time and a place for those pieces that make people uncomfortable and do that, but this was like just watching black excellence, you know, like an entire show of people that just slayed. It was like one of the most well-received, most well-attended shows of the year last year. And like, it was a really big deal.

Samson:
I think that also it's like straddling that line, too, because it's like so often the things that are celebrated as far as black artists are concerned has so much to do with our trauma. And it's like, the Juneteenth performance, or show had like 20 people in it, 20 amazing performers in it, and it was more celebratory.

I think that it's like making people understand that portion also. It's like it's such this weird kind of dual, responsibility. It is like on the one hand it's like, I do, I want to be honest and talk and speak about, you know, everything that is happening that is traumatic and what we're dealing with right now, but also there's all of this stuff that I also want to celebrate. And it's like choosing when to do when's the right time to do either one of those things has been difficult. And, you know, and like on a larger on a larger scale with COVID as well, you know what I mean? It'd be really easy to, you know, to consistently try to create art that people are going to relate to because they too, are experiencing those dark things or bring, you know, levity to the what we're all experiencing as well, so...