Out comedian Sampson is bringing the gift of laughter to Philadelphia when he performs Sept. 25 at the William Way LGBT Community Center.
Besides being a comedian, Sampson is also a writer, an actor and an activist who tours the country appearing on television shows and in stage productions, as well as educating audiences about homophobia, poverty and youth homelessness. And he’s the author of two books, “Taboo Village: A Perspective On Being Gay In Black America” and “Ebonic Faggotry.”
“It kind of falls into place,” Sampson said when asked how he keeps up with all of his creative endeavors. “It works a lot better when I’m doing shows. Especially when they are back to back, because then you get in the habit of writing and reviewing material. I’m critical of things that I do. I’m like, Why was this old lady in the front row looking at me like that?’ It wasn’t that I was doing bad or anything. It was because she had a hearing aid and it wasn’t cut on. So you start learning. So what I’ve been doing is I’ll take a tape recorder and record the shows and listen to them while I’m at the hotel. A lot of people who are in the arts, we quit our jobs because we didn’t have the freedom to focus on what it is we want to do. I think about not going back to that and I’ll easily spend six to eight hours just focused on creating material. It’s all about discipline and structure.”
Sampson has taken his talents to stages in some of the most prestigious venues in the country.
But, he said, he still sees his fair share of dives as well.
“I think I’ve been blessed to do it all. And I always talk about the shows that I do. I’ve done the White House and the Kennedy Center. Those venues are always fun. Everybody is like, ‘Did you meet Obama? Did you meet Michelle?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I did her hair. No.’ Those are fun, but the really fun shows to talk about are … Because comedy is one of those things where one night you can be performing at a five-star hotel or casino somewhere or a theater, and the next night you can be at a crackhouse. One night I’ll be at a crackhouse, the next night I’ll be at an old- folks’ home. You never know where you may end up. I do it all. I do comedy clubs, I do theaters and churches.”
Churches? Really?
“I actually get invited to do churches,” he said. “They know I’m an openly gay comedian and they still invite me in. Sometimes it’s for discussions or sometimes it’ll be for a presentation. They’ll be like, ‘You’re pretty normal.’ I guess they think I’m going to come in with
assless chaps. Not that there’s anything wrong with chaps, but I guess they identify all gay men with chaps and poodles and Pampers and all that crazy stuff.”
Sampson said some of his other gigs make performing in churches seem all the more normal.
“One time I performed at a funeral home. That was fun in a way. I didn’t know it was a funeral home because they had us come through the back door, so I thought it was a sketchy hole in the wall. And we go through this hallway and there’s a man in a casket. So you get different ones. I performed in an STD clinic one time. That was interesting because nobody thinks too much is funny when they are sitting there waiting for their results. It’s a mixture of places, but I’m starting to get back into the comedy-club scene again.”
The club scene isn’t always an ideal place for openly gay comedians or audience members, who run the risk of being subjected to homophobic jokes.
Sampson said he learned early to confront those types of situations with his own material.
“I’ve been an openly gay comedian for seven years,” he said. “I’ve been doing comedy for 11 years. I used to sit in the back of comedy clubs and I would hear other comedians using ‘faggot’ for punchlines. People would be falling out and I’m like, What is so funny about this? Years later, when I was going through the conflict of coming out and religion, this guy got up on stage and he verbally annihilated the gay community. From then on, I was like, I can’t do this. I’m sitting here being quiet and I go home and I want to kill myself. I sit in church and go through the same thing. When it comes to my verbalization about what my feelings are and what I’m dealing with as a gay man, if you can say whatever stupid and ignorant thing you want to say, I can say whatever comes out of my mouth that makes sense to me. The comedy is a reflection of me and who I am. I don’t change that for anybody. So what you see is what you get.”
Sampson added that the criticism he gets for his material often comes from gay audiences.
“The biggest group of PC folks that I have come into contact with have been some gay activists,” he said. “I’m also an activist but at the same time I’m a comedian and everything is not PC. I had a guy get upset with me for using the word ‘bitch.’ And I didn’t call anybody a bitch. I referred to a situation as a bitch. He said I was being misogynist for using that term. So it’s a mix of people you end up offending anyway. It just comes down to, you can’t make everybody happy.”
Now would be a good time to mention that the name of Sampson’s comedy show is “That Bitch Better Be Funny.”
Sampson said the name was inspired by a theater audience that was waiting to get into one of his performances.
“We live in a day and time where everybody is poor, so people go and they bust their brains out 40-60 hours a week on jobs and, after they pay their bills, a lot of times people aren’t able to go out to dinner and do little things,” he said. “When they do spend that last little bit of money that they have left, they’re like ‘This sandwich had better hit the spot. This bag of weed had better be good.’ Then they come to the comedy show and I’m looking at people’s expressions on their faces. You could see that they were genuinely happy to be there, but they also had that look as they were digging down to the bottom of their purses, and I can tell by the body language and the facial expression that it was like, ‘This bitch had better be funny.’ I know a lot of people go to box offices like that, so that’s how I came up with the name.”
Sampson performs 7 p.m. Sept. 25 at the William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St. For more information, call 215-732-2220 or visit www.sampsoncomedy.com.