Sam Max

B. 1995, USA

Sam Max is an American artist, director, and writer working in film and performance. They are known for creating “poetic spaces where death and dreams converge, making otherwordly encounters possible.”¹ Their work frequently engages with sexuality, gender, class, youth, violence, the film industry, and America.

Wüste / Photos: Jasmin Schuller

Sam is one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” 2022. ² Their “formally assured and chillingly acted”³ debut short film Chaperone (2022) held its world premiere at Sundance, and was deemed one of IndieWire’s “10 Must-See Shorts” of the festival that year.⁴ It subsequently received a Jury Special Mention for Best U.S. Short at Palm Springs, a Jury Special Mention for Best Short at Turin Horror, won the Horizon Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at 24fps, and was shortlisted for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. The film has played over three dozen festivals internationally, including Fantasia, NewFest, Overlook, BIFAN, Oslo Fusion, Iris Prize, and MotelX Lisbon, among many others. The film is distributed by Altered Innocence (North America) and Peccadillo Pictures (UK). Their “seductive and unnerving”⁵ and “super inventive”⁶ second short film Ticks (2022) was commissioned by Hulu and streams on the platform. It held festival premieres at NewFest and Palm Springs. Sam’s forthcoming debut feature Baby will be produced by Kindred Spirit and Cousins.

Chaperone (2022)

Ticks (2022)

After graduating from University of Evansville’s Theater Performance program in 2017, Sam started out in New York City as a set designer and rehearsal assistant. Meanwhile, they began writing plays and staging their own performance work on the side. As a performance artist they mounted early projects at Museum of Sex, Under the Radar Festival, The New Ohio, Dixon Place, and Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop, as well as in various bars and DIY spaces.⁷ They also developed their work as a student of the María Irene Fornés method.

Twin Size Beds, Under the Radar Festival, 2019.
Photo: Maria Baranova

Coop, Paradise Factory, 2020.
Photos: Maria Baranova

Sam began directing their own stage work in 2019, with Coop at Paradise Factory in the East Village. The play starred Lío Mehiel. The text of Coop (De: Zaun) then premiered in Germany in 2020, when the play held a German-language debut in Berlin at Theatertreffen in the Stückemarkt program. The play was called an “extraordinary debut piece [...], telling an exciting, atmospherically gripping story in a nonlinear fashion by fluidly interlacing two levels of reality: the choreographed, self-contained rhythms of everyday life with a para-real world of the subconscious.”⁸ The play later transferred to ETA Hoffmann Theater in Bamberg, under a new direction by Wilke Weermann, where its premiere was hailed “remarkable [...], captures the monstrosity of compulsively lived heteronormativity, as well as the vulnerability of the human psyche.”⁹ After workshops in China at Goethe-Institut Beijing, the play was also translated into Mandarin and published in One-Way Street Journal, Beijing.

Coop in One-Way Street Journal (Beijing): Contemporary Plays / Everything Stops Today

Coop (DE: Zaun) at ETA Hoffmann Theater, Bavaria, dir. Wilke Weermann

Referred to as a new “theater anarchist,”¹⁰ in 2021 Sam’s work for stage was acquired by Suhrkamp Theater Verlag, where they are also represented as a Director in the German-speaking regions.

In the 2023/2024 season, Sam was invited to be a Guest Director at the historic Deutsches Theater Berlin, under commission to premiere their fourth play on the German acting ensemble. The “virtuoso chamber piece” was called “strongly played” and “surprising,” and the performance will continue to play in the theater’s repertoire.

The Holes (DE: Wüste) at Deutsches Theater (2024)
Photos: Jasmin Schuller

In the 2024/2025 season, Sam will make their Off-Broadway Directorial debut at Playwrights Horizons, remounting their show This Is My Favorite Song, which they developed and conceptualized in collaboration with experimental comedian Francesca D’Uva, who writes and performs.

Sam’s direction of Francesca D’Uva’s This Is My Favorite Song at Abrons Arts Center, 2022
Stills: Kayhl Cooper

In New York Sam is also a resident playwright of New Dramatists (2021-2029) and a frequent Directing Resident and Directing Lab mentor at Mercury Store. Their performance work has previously been presented and developed at National Sawdust, Abrons Arts Center, Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, Cutting Ball Theater (San Francisco), and ETA Hoffmann Theater (Bamberg), among others. They have produced new work or supported production at BAM, Performance Space New York, HERE Arts Center, and more. They have been invited to read from new work at The Poetry Project, Melville’s Arrowhead, Sarasota Art Museum, DAGESH Transitions Festival (Vienna), and Suhrkamp.

Their plays or performances have been taught at The New School and Pratt. They have been a guest artist or lecturer at Vassar and NYU Tisch (Playwrights Horizons, Strasberg Institute).

Sam’s artistic and producing work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Filmmaker Magazine, IndieWire, Screen Slate, and the Royal Court Playwrights Podcast, among many others.

Sam’s critical writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in Movement Research Performance Journal, BOFFO’s Talking to the Sun at Fire Island Vol. 2, Arcane Press, 53rd State Press’s The Occasional, Suhrkamp Magazine, and frequently at Culturebot. They are currently attached as Editor to the first monograph exploring the New York-based performance and art collective Spiral Theory Test Kitchen.

Sam is the recipient of the 2021 Lotos Foundation Prize in the Arts and Sciences, and the 2019 Chesley-Bumbalo Playwriting Award. They were an Honorable Mention for the Relentless Award in 2019. In 2018 they were named a member of the Young & Hungry List’s “Top 100 New Hollywood Writers.”

Sam’s direction of Orlando at May Studio Theater, 2017
Photo by Daniel B Knight

Suhrkamp Theater Verlag
Filmmaker Magazine
Filmmaker Magazine
IndieWire
Filmmaker Magazine
Desert Sun
The Royal Court Playwright’s Podcast, in conversation with Simon Stephens
Suhrkamp Theater Verlag
Die Deutsche Bühne
Suhrkamp Theater Verlag