Performer links people to emotions
Sam Hyre performs in a production of All Shook Up. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Sam Hyre’s business is the study of life, fully expressing emotions on stage for the audience to feel.
The young thespian, who also sings and dances, explained what musical theater means to him.
“I find that human life is so fascinating,” he said. “For musicals, the reason why we're singing is because words cannot simply express what we are feeling. That’s the very essence of theater, the reason we dance and sing is that mere words are simply not enough.”
Sam, 23, performs as part of Savannah College of Art and Design’s prestigious group.
“We are what they call SCAD's Professional Vocal Ensemble,” he said. “We're called the Bee Sharps. This is an audition-only group. We travel all over the place. For example, last summer, we were in France doing shows for SCAD’s Lacoste campus and surrounding cities. One of my favorites is this show we do every year called Sidewalk Arts, which attracts approximately 25,000 people. We travel every two or three weeks performing creative shows including pop, jazz, musical theater, rock and more.”
Sam also performs in the college’s home state.
“There's about 15 of us,” he said. “Sometimes we will split up, but most of the time, we are a family and like to stick together. We perform private gigs, galas and jazz concerts such as the Savannah Jazz Festival. However, most of our shows are SCAD-related. Those are fun gigs.”
Sam has been with the group from its genesis.
“I am part of the original group of the Bee Sharps,” he said. “I’m happy to say being a part of this original Bee Sharps hive has been a pleasure and a humble accomplishment. It used to be something that was called the Honeybees. Then the president of the school, President Wallace, had this new vision. She wanted it to be very theatrical and inviting, because a lot of our shows are for the prospective students and their parents. We offer a very high-energy show that encapsulates many audiences, including our Christmas Spectacular show in Savannah and Atlanta.”
Consequently, Sam was part of a new type of ensemble for the college with a bumblebee mascot.
“We often sing music from artists such as Whitney Houston, Elton John and Elvis Presley,” he said. “That's more of how we market ourselves is we do shows that can bring people in, bring people together over a common love for music, especially when it's their whole entire family that is coming to visit the school. It's fun for us to show them what we do as artists.”
Sam also works for the college.
“I'm actually employed by them as well,” he said. “Not only as a singer and dancer, I am the Bee Sharps student music assistant as well. I am under a work-study with the SCAD acting department to help take care of the music side of things with our incredible team, music director Kim Steiner and artistic director Mike Evariste.”
Sam explained one method the performers use at the college to help their voices.
“We’re thrilled to have Liz Gray, a phenomenal vocal instructor,” he said. “She has dedicated a lot of time to helping us nourish our voices. She introduced us to straw phonation: you grab a cup of water and a straw and lightly buzz on the straw with airflow to warm up and warm down the voice. This is an essential part of taking care of the voice. It's just like working out in the gym, you have to warm up before and stretch to warm down after.”
Sam said there are some indicators a singer’s voice is ailing, which isn’t always apparent.
“Most performers are very good at hiding it,” he said. “We are taught to sound like we’re at 100 percent even if our effort is only at 30 percent. If there is irritation in the throat, the lymph nodes may start to swell. For someone who has simply overused their voice, you can hear a gravelly timbre.”
Sam also sings in his free time.
“The recordings on my Instagram of me singing, that's just more of my little freelance thing,” he said. “That's more of an artistical therapy for me is to just take songs and redo them a little bit or find tracks that bring music forward in a different way. That's my outlet outside of the school stuff. The Bee Sharps absorb most of my time throughout the year. I do, however, find time for my own artistic outlet and enjoy making music videos to share.”
Sam also gets to display his acting chops at the college’s venue: The Lucas Theater.
“I pretty much do every musical that we do here,” he said. “We try to do about two a year. When I first got here, freshman year was still Covid time, so we just did one and still five seats apart. We have a giant 1,200-seat historical theater here, and it's a full Broadway house. We just did Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. I played a Righteous Brother. One of the other Bee Sharps, Trever, was the other Righteous Brother. We did You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling under the amazing direction of Tiffany Evariste, Jasper Grant and Annie Bridges. My favorite types of shows come from that ‘50s and ‘60s era.”
Sam sings with the Bee Sharps.
Sam has performed shows from various periods, but gravitates to his favorite.
“My first show here, I played one of the leads as Dean Hyde in the musical All Shook Up during my freshman year, which was cool,” he said. “It was a risk, but they put their trust in me to bring my artistic thoughts to the character. We've done the Pippin stuff, too, but I really like that bringing it back to where music actually started — that Golden Age of theater. It not only teaches me, but also teaches people who are in the crowd where this art stems from. Even business-minded like my dad love this type of stuff.”
Sam juggles his commitments.
“I try to be involved in every single musical, but with that schedule that I have, it's hard,” he said. “I really like the musical theater experience. When I can, I do a show, but that's a 10-week commitment. Six days a week for about five hours, and then a two-week tech run at the end of it with four shows. You and the team will probably spend up to 60 hours a week just getting that tech work done, getting lights and all that other stuff. It's a giant commitment on both ends in front and behind the curtain. With that all being said, the experience of doing a SCAD musical is very rewarding.”
Sam has played a variety of roles.
“I've played a woman before,” he said. “It was the most challenging, yet enjoyable role I have ever played. I played Miss Trunchbull from Matilda at the Naples Performing Arts Center.”
“It was from that moment on, just that type of connection and rhythm with another person was very intriguing to me for some reason.”
As a youth, Sam’s surroundings didn’t lend itself to a future in stage.
“I have three older brothers,” he said. “I'm also the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed person in my family, the last of four boys, too. I had to switch it up a little bit because they are all football, basketball and baseball. My dad was even the coach and assistant coach of their teams at different points. That was my whole entire life. It was kind of expected of me.”
Sports didn’t appeal to Sam, though.
“When I was young, my mom said, all right, we're going to see what you're interested in,” he said. “I did the baseball. I did the sports thing. I did all that, and I ended up hating all of them. I like to be with my family and watch the game. But I realized I don't I need to be tackled every day. That's just not me.”
Sam eventually found his passion.
“There was one summer when I was 6 or 7 that my mom just got a little fed up with me in the most motherly way,” he said. “She said, you can't be home every day. I have a job. I have things to do. So she signed me up for this theater camp in Naples, Florida. That's where they live now. And I will thank her every day for it. The first day, I sat there and we did this exercise where it's basically a very intricate version of patty cake. It was from that moment on, just that type of connection and rhythm with another person was very intriguing to me for some reason.”
Everyone wasn’t sold on Sam’s new interest.
“From that moment on, it just continued,” he said. “My entire family thought, oh, it's a phase. But it never ended, which is just something that my family thought, oh, I guess this is what it is now. My family is so business-oriented. I had to shake things up a little bit. I continued to do what I did, and I realized that I could actually sing through that. I wasn't very good. But I had something, and so I was like, okay, let's try and work this.”
Sam said living in various locales throughout his childhood helped him develop as an artist.
“I have actually moved around quite a bit as a kid,” he said. “Dad's in the hotel business. But for me, that was something that I could learn from, because my business is the study of human life. It's more of the emotion that comes out of us as people. Having to make new friends each time helped me grow and also made me a good judge of character and a good judge of what I do to bring that to life on stage or behind a camera.”
Sam said his love of theater can’t be duplicated through film.
“There's a thing with live theater or just performing with a microphone in your hand,” he said. “Even if it's just singing, there's a thing that happens with that adrenaline rush that comes into your body. The thrill of if you mess up, you need to know how to fix it. If I say the wrong line, I get to try to fix that moment and still get to my objective. It’s an addictive challenge. Even messing up is the most rewarding feeling to go through because nine times out of 10, that moment that you messed up was so real that somebody connected to it because you were being real. It wasn't acting for you anymore. You have swerved around what you have been working on for 10 weeks. That feeling of live theater of when you get to the objective even if you've messed up, there's nothing that beats it with film.”
“If something goes wrong, obviously, you might have a miniature little freak-out moment. But if you have that objective in mind, you’re playing a human, use it. So as long as you have that same objective and you’re able to still land there, then it’s totally fine.”
Sam said a film is edited, eliminating that thrill.
“You mess up,” he said. “Cut. They redo it. You mess up. Cut. They redo it. As much as I would love to be in film because I'm being totally honest where the money lies, I would 100 percent miss the thrill of being in front of 2,000 people or even just my family singing a song because the emotion that you give out comes right back. It's like when you're singing in a room that has amazing acoustics. You sing. That sound bounces off that wall and hits you in the face. That whole entire feeling that goes through your body is just something that is unmatched. I don't think any actor has ever been able to replicate that exact feeling with a film.”
Sam doesn’t fret about a mistake during a live show.
“If you have an objective in your mind, if you have a place that you need to get to, that is one of the first things they teach in school is as long as you have a place where you land and you land there, it doesn't matter,” he said. “If something goes wrong, obviously, you might have a miniature little freak-out moment. But if you have that objective in mind, you're playing a human, use it. So as long as you have that same objective and you're able to still land there, then it's totally fine. That happens all the time.”
Sam said actors should be prepared for the periodic need to improvise on the fly.
“Good actors know to have that objective in your mind at all times,” he said. “Even if you know as the person or character, you’re not going to get to that objective or the other actor is not going to allow you to just because of how the storyline lines up, you’re still going to fight for your life to get there.”
Sam and Fatou Jackson perform a scene in All Shook Up.
Although Sam doesn’t seek a film career, he appreciates the filmmaking process for such classics as Alfred Hitchcok’s North by Northwest — a process that lost something over the decades.
“Now this is just a thought, but I think we have gotten to a point in this creative process that it's become too complicated,” he said. “They've made it way too complicated, and it should just go back to the way the Golden Age did it. I feel like even just watching the films, there's a simplicity with it, but yet still so fascinating. The acting core of where that all came from, I just think that we've made it so much more complicated than it needs to be. For the actors, they over complicated it for themselves so it doesn't become truth in acting anymore.”
Sam said the classic era of Hollywood got it right.
“I just feel like we’ve lost the truth within it,” he said. “There are messages that people are trying to send and trying to control different narratives with it, but we should just go back to how simple it used to be. Golden Age theater didn't have all of this extra stuff added onto it.”
Sam said some people are meant for the arts.
“There are those two types of people, right-brained and left, although everyone is unique in their own way,” he said. “You have the business-minded people and then you have the artistic people. For me, the reason why I do this is because we give an outlet for the people who can't access emotions as well as we can as artists. Why I do this is because I want to be the person that makes you feel something that you've been longing to feel or something that you needed in your life. I'm allergic to math, so that's not something I can do. What I can do is I can be that artistic part of your brain and activate certain things that allow you to feel.”
Sam watches Fiona Blanchet sing.
Sam said it can take only one moment in a production to reach someone.
“That's why the study of life is so interesting to me is just because there are certain things that you can unlock in somebody just by a certain harmony or a certain feeling that you're putting out there,” he said. “One of the examples that I talk about is the musical that just came out, The Notebook. Joy Woods has a song called My Days. I watched a whole study on it. By her body language and how she had her palms open towards the audience the whole entire song, no matter who you are, no matter what you're feeling, it invites you in to feel what she's feeling.”
Sam described his role as a performer.
“A lot of people can't get to that bottom drawer,” he said. “Something that we talk about is opening up that bottom drawer. Whether you sealed it shut yourself, I'm going to find a way to open it. I'm going to find what makes you motivated. It's a very intricate thing where we are able to do something that most people can't because a gift was given to us. The gifts of the business world were not given to me. I had to figure out what purpose I was put on this earth for. I think the purpose is to help people feel, is to help people do things internally that allow them to be human.”
Sam devised a method for remembering his lines.
“I have been through about a thousand different ways of trying to figure this out because it truly is an art in itself,” he said. “It's just memorizing lines. The best way that I have found is the minute you read that script or that side that a director sends you, you read that with no emotion, out loud, completely monotone. There should be no thought in your brain other than just reading words. Because if you start reading it or acting it, then you start planning. And planning in musical theater is not for the actor. it's not a place you should or want to be.”
Sam adds emotion later.
“Take the time and do it multiple times by yourself and just read the lines,” he said. “Don't put anything into them. Don't add anything into them. Once you get to a point where you can get off book, put the lines down for a second. Have somebody come in and give them the paper, have them read the other lines unless it's a monologue, and then it becomes real for you. Because if you do all this extra work in the beginning, then you get into habits of saying lines a certain way.”
“I love the commercial work because you just get 15 seconds, you get like three lines, and then you get to change them in different ways.”
Sam starts to become the part after learning the lines.
“Obviously, you want to figure out what makes you tick,” he said. “However, when you are just reading a role for the first time, you don't know who that person is. You simply don't. Other than the two-sentence thing about them that you get in the audition tape, this person's charismatic. They love this. They love that. That's all you get, so you don't know this person whatsoever. You just have to let the words feed into you first. You're not never really going to get fully memorized by doing that, but you'll get to a point where you can just allow the realism to pop into your body and you stand up. If I can just get through those words without even truly understanding them, just to get them into my body for a second before I start putting in the extra work, that's where I would always like to start.”
Sam hopes to do professional theater next year.
“Hopefully, within the next 10 months or so, I'll be moving to New York,” he said. “I would like to be on Broadway and do the musical theater stuff, but then eventually, I would like to start a family, and doing eight shows a week with the family is not going to work. I'd be a happy stay-at-home dad for sure, but I would like to own my own production company and produce the shows on Broadway.”
Sam has found another potential line of work as well.
“I took my first ever voiceover class for game, animation, TV and film, and that was honestly the most interesting thing I have ever done,” he said. “I finished my reel for that, which is a bunch of different commercials. I love the commercial work because you just get 15 seconds, you get like three lines, and then you get to change them in different ways. While I'm starting a family and building that company, that's where I think I'm going to end up, because I can be home and do that. I can do that from a closet. I have heard of friends in New York making great money weekly going into their closet and saying butter three times. I will always recommend actors do this on the side.”
Sam's Dean Hyde salutes during All Shook Up.
Sam also could do dubbing for background scenes.
“You also have what they call loop groups,” he said. “When somebody films a scene in a movie, you have people in the background that are mouthing words. Somebody needs to come in and replicate the visual of that. A group of people will come in front of a microphone, and those people can make up to $1,000 an hour. That would be something that I'm interested in.”
But Sam’s path starts on the stage.
“The roadmap I see for myself is the musical theater in New York if I’m blessed enough to do that,” he said. “Then move into that voiceover stuff and start to build this company that I would like to call Hyre Productions. Then maybe pull an Adam Sandler every once in a while and be in my own shows.”
Sam said his production company would help other thespians.
“The reason why I want to start this production company is not truly to produce shows,” he said. “I don't want that to be my all-in. With theater acting and even film acting after college, there's no other further education besides taking a class here and there. I keep hearing people getting cast in a show and then when their contract ends, go back to working in a bar. There's no other form of education than experiencing it. I would like to start this company to build these classrooms within it where people can learn and then have our own agency that's casting them as they're still learning and making a living.”
Sam said such an environment is conducive for performers.
“The study of human life is not something that you can perfect,” he said. “I don't think anything can be perfect, but there's always something to learn, and there's always a new experience that will teach you something to help teach somebody else. I want a place where people can go instead of going to work in a diner. That's not going to really help them. I want a place where somebody can go where they can still be cast in shows that are in-house, still get paid to do them, but also still be in a classroom. Even if you're 70 years old, there's still something that you can learn with this. I would like to build an environment where you can still continue to learn, but also still continue to work and not have to find work elsewhere.”
“Not only am I teaching an audience member how to feel and what to feel and how to open up that bottom drawer, I’ve also had the experience of teaching people how to do that, which was such a cool experience.”
Just as attending a summer camp led Sam to start his theater journey, a later period spurred his interest in teaching.
“During the Covid season, Naples Performing Arts Center hired me to be a vocal coach,” he said. “That's where the teaching part of the Hyre Productions came in. I taught people from 4 years old to 27. People that were seven to 10 years older than me, I was teaching. It was one of those things where it was so rewarding even for me just to see somebody hit a note the right way for the first time. That's another thing that clicked to me was the teaching aspect of it. Not only am I teaching an audience member how to feel and what to feel and how to open up that bottom drawer, I've also had the experience of teaching people how to do that, which was such a cool experience. My favorite part about it was getting kids involved in theater.”
Sam is inspired by other artists, whether they’re students or peers.
“One of those things was the teaching aspect of it,” he said. “Seeing somebody else get to the point that you're getting to now. I'm in a place where we're all peers and we're all helping each other. What keeps me motivated is the people that I surround myself with. I'm with those singers every single day and even just seeing them hit a goal of theirs. Specifically in this business, you learn so much more from watching somebody else. I'm watching somebody else who has a totally different, unique talent than I do. What keeps me motivated is seeing the work around me grow. The growth that I have seen within these 15 people, that's what inspires me is me wanting to keep up with the people that I surround myself with.”
Sam never wants to stop learning.
“I never want to be the best person in the room, and I never want to be the worst person in the room,” he said. “I want to be right in the center so I can learn from every single one of you. Everybody has something to teach. Watching somebody go through a scene where they're struggling, and they're struggling, and they're struggling, and it finally clicks. I learned more just watching them do it, because now when I have to go through that and I want to access that emotion. I've seen the roadmap. That's what keeps me motivated is surrounding myself with people who are better than me so I can learn from them and learn to do what they just did in front of me.”
Sam elaborated on why performing is a passion.
“I'm so passionate about this because I learned so much about not only other people, but myself,” he said. “It's something that I continue, especially being 23. Every single day, I go through something that I can use, or if I go through something that's traumatic, I can use that. I'm a method actor, so what I do is I use my own experiences and use them like a dial. I either turn that emotion up or I turn that emotion down.”
Sam savors the variety of being an actor.
“I get to be somebody else every single day even if I'm singing a pop song ot at the jazz festival,” he said. “I get to be the person, the picture that I have in my brain of that character, person or artist. It's such a cool and intricate thing, and it's also not easy. I love a challenge. When it comes to playing a woman like Miss Trunchbull, I had to learn something new. I had to learn a different voice type. I had to learn a different tone and where to place things. You learn something new just about every single day no matter what part of this business you're in.”
Sam added the ability to help others access emotions as another aspect of his love for theater.
“That's where the passion lies is, one, I get to be a different person every single day and, two, I get to be that person that shows you what you've been longing for and that emotion that you couldn't access or needed to access,” he said. “It's fun to look at the study of life based on body language, emotion, tone and physical attributes. It's a very interesting thing, and I don't think it will ever get boring for me.”
Sam said the two types of people, those in the arts and those in the sciences, complement each other.
“We can allow each other to help each other in many different ways,” he said. “You can take some things off of your plate and let the creatives handle that for you. I’ll let you do what you’re good at, but it’s important to still be able to come together as a cohesive group of people. A lot of peace lies within art as long as it is put out there in a way where you are not trying to direct a message. That's the foundation that it was built on. We have skewed away from that. There are things that you were put on this earth to do. There's a lot of peace in what we do as artists, and there's a lot of peace in what business-minded people do. We can just become one together in separate ways.”
“You get into these characters and if you’re doing it correctly, you become this person and you feel what this person feels.”
Sam dispensed advice to aspiring stage performers.
“If you want to do the musical theater side of things, you need to start with the conditioning of the body and mind,” he said. “If it's something that you're just starting to do, the most important part is training your body and mind to be healthy. There are things that you don't want to do and feelings that you don't want to feel. This is just part of this business. As long as you can keep yourself in a good state of mind and know the difference between character and reality, you should be just fine.”
Sam said that process starts by focusing on fitness.
“Even if you just want to go as far as doing community theater, you need to stay healthy in all types of ways,” he said. “Your body needs to be healthy. You need to be in the gym.”
Sam said a performer also has to be cognizant of mental health.
“I have done shows where I have walked off a stage with hundreds of students and theater-goers wanted to take pictures and talk, but I can't even get out of it,” he said. “I need to leave. I did a very dark show a few years ago, and it took something from me instead of giving it to me. You need to be able to keep your mindset very clean and know who you are through and through. You need to know who you are as a human and what you can give to this world and the stories that are chosen to be shared.”
Sam sings with Fiona and Eli Talley with Assaf Gleizner on piano.
Sam stressed the importance of a performer seperating from a character.
“Make sure that you stay human and that you can find the reality with yourself,” he said. “You get into these characters and if you're doing it correctly, you become this person and you feel what this person feels. And that can be very detrimental to your body and to your mind because you are literally tricking your mind and body to make you feel these things. If you can get to a point where you can immediately shut it off, that's where you need to stay. But that only comes with training your body and your mind to be able to find your way back to you.”
Sam said an actor bears a responsibility.
“Telling somebody else's story is a huge responsibility, whether it be fiction or nonfiction,” he said. “Somebody either wrote this or somebody had lived this, so make sure that you are in a right state of mind to actually bring the story forward truthfully. New York actors are doing eight shows a week, and that takes a giant physical toll on your body as well. If you want to do this, you need to make sure that you are in a state of mind that allows you to access parts of your brain and parts of your body that sometimes you don't want to. Knowing the difference between reality and character, and keeping yourself healthy in all states, that's the most important thing.”
Sam’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samhyre11/