About Sam Gonzalez

Like many actors and non-actors before him, Sam spent many hours during his childhood years playing make-believe. His make-believe world was governed primarily by magic. In this world just about anything could happen and just about everyone had the means to cast a spell, brew a potion, and travel great distances in mere seconds by the simple blink of an eye, the twitch of a nose, the brush of an eyelash, etc. Sam lived by Debbie Reynolds’ words as Grandma Aggie Cromwell who said, “Magic is really very simple. All you have to do is want something and let yourself have it.” As such it was no surprise when the opportunity to make-believe on a stage in front of other people, as well as the resulting magical feeling, came into Sam’s life that he was instantly hooked. Once the audience roared at his physically specific and emotionally nuanced performance as the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz at P.S.162 in Bayside, Queens, it could be said that the rest was history. But since this is a bio we’ll continue.

As childhood became adolescence Sam gravitated towards any means to keep the magic of performing around. This included High School Drama, concert choir, chamber choir, and even the passion plays at his grandmother’s church on 137th and Broadway. It was also around this time that dance came into his life. While spending an all too often aimless high school summer serving lunches and selling snacks at a nearby dance studio, Sam observed the students in class and pontificated about his natural ability to one-up them. He soon joined the school, was humbled by the difficulty of the art form, and began his training in ballet, jazz, and modern dance.

With the college application process fast approaching, Sam searched for a way to confirm for himself that his love for performing was more than a hobby or pastime, but a true passion; something from which a career could grow. The search ended with Northwestern University’s National High School Institute theatre program, or the “Cherub” program. The seven-week theatre intensive gave him the confirmation he needed and more. Theatre as hobby or theatre as extracurricular activity turned into theatre as Work with a capital W. This was the kind of work Sam would be happy to do for the rest of his life. 

The following year Sam was accepted to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he trained at the Atlantic Acting School. Here he made the friends, colleagues, and mentors that would be the heart of his performing community in NYC to this day. Upon graduation in 2014, he co-founded The Joust Theatre Company with many of his then-peers. Joust continues to produce theatre and provides a space for new and emerging playwrights in NYC. 

In the almost 6 years since graduating, Sam has performed across all five boroughs of New York City, joined the ensemble of Pipeline Theatre Company in 2018, and has returned to the Atlantic Acting School as a teacher where he teaches Script Analysis to both NYU students and the school’s full-time conservatory. He still believes in magic and above all has come to believe that telling stories is the strongest antidote to the existential loneliness that haunts us all at one point or another in our lives. As long as he believes that he will insist on being an ingredient in that antidote.