During her five seasons at Flint Repertory Theatre, Nicole Samsel has fallen in love with the community. And, as the newly named producing artistic director for the professional theatre, she loves that part of her role entails helping others fall in love with the city as well.
“I find Flint to be a community that’s really rich culturally,” said Samsel, who had been serving as the interim artistic director since last year before her permanent appointment in February. “I love that it’s surprising to people who haven’t been here sometimes. One of the joys of my job is that we bring some folks in and have them stay here for two months and work with us, and it’s really satisfying to have people come and they’re now calling me saying, ‘Oh, I really wanna come back to Flint, do you have anything for me?’ People are hungry to come back because they really enjoy their time here, which is just not something you get every place.”
Samsel has traveled and lived all over the country during her theatre career, including roles as the director of operations for Antaeus Theatre Company in Los Angeles, general manager of the Tony Award-winning Broadway cabaret 54 Below, and a founding company member and literary manager of New York’s Mad Dog Theatre Company. She’s worked as a teaching artist and arts administrator at major regional theatres including Asolo Repertory Theatre and Two River Theatre, and has a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and Theatre from DePauw University in Indiana and holds a master’s degree in performance studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
“I have lived a lot of different places, my family moved around a bit when I was a kid,” Samsel said. “And then as a young arts professional, I started my career in Florida, I lived in New York, I lived in L.A. I went to school in a small town in Indiana. So I’ve had the fun opportunity of getting to see what it’s like living in a lot of different places, I’ve done the biggest and smallest. And the things that I love about Flint are just that there’s a lot of pride that people take in living here and being from here. I like the ability to actually serve a community with theater.”
In her interim role, Samsel had to hit the ground running – due to renovations at Bower Theatre, her team has spent the past year without access to their home space. A creative partnership with the University of Michigan-Flint gave them performance and rehearsal space, and has culminated with a dynamic co-performance that has one more weekend of performances. Lucky Stiff features professional actors and backstage personnel working alongside UM-Flint theatre students.
Although that partnership is coming to a close – their performance of Green Day’s American Idiot later this spring is their last of the season – as Flint Rep plans to move back into its home space on the Flint Cultural Center campus next year, Samsel hopes it is just the beginning of creative ways the entities can work together in the future. For example, Samsel pointed out that Lucky Stiff makes use of a fly system that wouldn’t have been possible in their home theatre. And, she said, for a future student production, it might make more sense for UM-Flint to produce it in a smaller, more intimate theatre to provide that type of teaching experience to students, so it’s conceivable they could continue to partner and have dialogue about what makes sense.
“I’m hoping that as we move back across the highway, we are able to kind of bring some of the folks who have discovered us and I also hope that it is a two-way street,” Samsel said. “I’m really looking at, once we have our venue open again, the ways in which what we have can enrich what UM-Flint’s theatre program has and vice versa. It’s really about creating that dialogue and then continuing it. Shelby (Newport, the chair of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts and coordinator of the theatre and dance program at UM-Flint) and I have been trying to find ways that we’re not both just doing our own things. And I hope that that applies to the audience too. One of the best ways to get more people to the Cultural Center campuses is to have student-led work there.”
In addition to a full production season at UM-Flint, Samsel also oversaw a wide range of other programs over the past year. She launched Flint Rep on the Road, a touring initiative that brought professional theatre into schools, senior centers, and other community centers, with performances of The Birds in November and February. She also brought back the theatre’s New Works Festival, an annual week of staged readings of new plays and musicals, and introduced the Ghost Light Cabaret series, a unique monthly concert series, in the Elgood Theatre lobby.
The past year has been an exciting one for Samsel, but she’s looking forward to settling into the role on a permanent basis.
“It is different doing the job in an interim way because a lot of it was thinking about the here and now, like, okay, we’re in this season, what does the season need to be? What do we need to accomplish and how are we gonna do it?” she said. “So now having the opportunity to step in permanently, it kind of opens those doors to start thinking a little bit more long-term. It’s not just, okay, what are we gonna do next season? It’s what’s our five year plan? I’m thrilled. I love it here. I love Flint. I love the arts community and I love what I’ve been able to get to start to do this past year.”
In addition to wrapping up the run of Lucky Stiff and with American Idiot coming soon, Flint Rep will also be announcing its next season in May and preparing to move back into its home theatre.
“It has been lovely being here (UM-Flint), but I am looking forward to being back in our home venue,” Samsel said. “I really love producing in the Elgood and love being on the Cultural Center campus. It’ll feel really nice to kind of have that homecoming and then also to open the renovated Bower Theatre. It’s gonna be a rediscovery because the way we use that space will be very different from the way it was used previously. It will be really exciting.”
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