Interview with Plague Mask Players

I got to spend some time with Samantha Calatozzo Cobb, the Founder and Artistic/Executive Director of the Plague Mask Players in Texas. What started as COVID project by Samantha and her team has now blossomed into an international playground for actors and Shakespeare fans from all over. From continuing their virtual productions to moving to live outdoor Shakespeare as well, this company is on the move - dont’ miss this interview. (More interviews here.)

Follow Plague Mask Players here:

Website: Plague Mask Players
Facebook.com: @plaguemaskplayers
Instagram: @plaguemaskplayers

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If you’d rather read the interview, a rough transcript is below.

Interview with Plague Mask Players

Michael Van Osch: Hey, it’s Michael Van Osch. Welcome to the HARK Journal. Thanks for joining us for our interview series. And if you haven’t checked out our daily Shakespeare meditation email, please check that out as well. At the website, a lot of people seem to be enjoying that. So, today I am talking to Dallas, Texas, and really pleased to have on our show, Samantha Calatozzo Cobb from the Plague Mask Players.

Hi, Samantha.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Hi. I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

Michael Van Osch: Thanks for joining us. This is great. So, so you’re in Dallas, Texas. What is happening these days in Dallas? How are you guys doing? This is a, this is a new project, relatively new project. So tell us a little bit about the Plague Mask Players.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Sure. So we are like many including yourself, a birth of COVID.

So we are still in that fantastic new growing phase. We’re about a year and a half old right now. We were started in May 2020, which is a crazy time for us all. So we have expanded our exciting virtual series and we’re looking towards putting on some live workshops and classes and shows very safely in Dallas, you know, with everything that’s going on.

So it’s a very exciting time for us.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah. And you know, I was glad to connect with you because your mission really interested me. And if you don’t mind, I’d just like to read it because I copied it down here so the folks know where you’re coming from. So the Plague Mask Players was founded as an inclusive outlet for professional performers to share their craft while disregarding gender age, race in the virtual world of 2020 and beyond.

And it says here that “we’ve built a strong global community founded on the values of empowering supporting and developing theater artists.” Wow, fantastic. So what was the impetus for you to start this because you’re the Founder and Artistic and Executive Director.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yes thank you. We’re very proud of that mission.

And we work very hard to uphold it. What started playing mass players was of course the pandemic and I was coming off of it. Right. Trying to reschedule my wedding that was scheduled for May of 2020, got rescheduled. About five times. We finally ended up getting married in the backyard. Like many people did, but I was in a low point of my life.

As you can imagine, we all were struggling with work. I was struggling with being in a grad program, working full time in a pandemic, planning, a wedding, and this all just came to a head in may and I thought, you know, I cannot be the only person who’s feeling a hole and I think as artists, we fill that hole with the connection that we feel through the arts that we have with each other, and that we create together.

And I love Shakespeare and was like, I’m going to make a Facebook group. And I did it that day and was like, there has to be at least five people who want to read some Shakespeare plays that I know. And I reached out and added people and we put on a show within a few weeks virtually, and that group has grown from myself to now 425 people in nine different countries putting on virtual productions. And it’s crazy. We did a show every single week during the pandemic. We’re now at bi-weekly, but we’ve done about 37 shows in a year with professional actors from all over the world. And it’s amazing.

Michael Van Osch: Wow. That is something so pretty hard to keep track of all those times zones, I would think, how did you do it?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Well, I have a great team. I have Shea and Michael McMillan, a married couple. I met doing a play to get Shakespeare play together where they actually fell in love and got married from, which is super cute. And the fabulous Courtney Mentzal. So I have a wonderful team that helps me because it quickly grew and I quickly needed help and they have just such incredible ideas and we would not be what we are today.

Each and every one of their ideas, as well as our incredible players we’re very, very organized and very, very scheduled and very, very clear so that we have people, you know, in Australia or Canada or Ireland, you want to be in a Dallas, Texas time zone production. They’re going to need a lot of information. So we were very clear.

Michael Van Osch: As I would expect an MBA grad to be right. Thank you.

So you’re a professional actor, obviously living and, and directing and, and doing your thing in Plano and Dallas. And you graduated Summa Cum Laude with your BFA in Theater, and recently did your MBA at MSU. Congratulations. Fantastic. And you performed regionally at Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Sundown Collaborative Theater, Shakespeare Dallas, and the Walt Disney Company.

Let me ask you this, what drew you originally to Shakespeare?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: So when I was in college, I was in Nashville, Tennessee at Belmont University, and I had wonderful theater companies that would come in and present to the students. All the productions that we’re doing and Nashville Shakespeare Festival and Denise Hicks came in and pitched As You Like It to us.

And that was I’d liked it in school and stuff, but they were like, come audition with us. Come be in a professional show. And I did, and I was in their apprenticeship company and I got cast As You Like It as Phoebe for Nashville Shakes in the Park, I got to be in the parking lot. And then they cast me again in Twelfth Night for their winter show and I just completely fell in love with it.

And I attribute that to lots of the wonderful things that they do there and how incredible Denise Hicks is. And that whole team just inspired a love for me for that particular genre of the arts. And I like to be picky and mostly just do Shakespeare as you’ve probably seen from my resume. So they gave me an incredible passion for it.

Michael Van Osch: Oh, that’s fantastic. And yeah totally agree Denise Hicks is an amazing person love her and all she’s done for Nashville Shakes, but also for HARK Journal, selfishly speaking. She’s been great. You know what I found really interesting. Tell us about your virtual series, but also how you cast the roles.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yeah. So that’s the fun part for us. I realized very quickly when I wanted to put on these shows that I didn’t care who read what part, I just wanted to enjoy the art. Like that’s what the focus is on, is performing together and making something beautiful. And so very early, we said, we don’t care who you are, what you look like, what you identify as.

We just want you to share your talent with us? So we try to cask our virtual shows, age, race, gender blind. We did Midsummer and had a 60-year-old white man play Puck. I played bottom. And the way that we figured that out is we used a random name generator, which is one of our favorite ways to cast. We have a couple of different ways, but really three main ones for our virtual shows.

We’ve got a wheel of names. So we’ll schedule a post in our private Facebook group and say, 7:30 on Tuesday. We have 12 spots in As You Like It. The first 12 people to comment, you’re in the show. Congratulations. And we’ll plug-in those 12 names to a wheel of names on the internet like teachers use and the name that pops up – Okay, that’s our Rosalind. Okay. That’s our feet. That’s what we do. And we’ve also done domino casting where we roll the die. The first name that comes up, my name comes up. I get to pick one actor in one part, and I cast that actor and then that actor casts the next person. And we go down til everybody gets to cast each other.

Done surveys where you vote as a company and say, this is who I want to play. Or the board picks. We love to vary it up because that’s when you really get challenged as an actor like I got to play Iago and Bottom, and now I love Iago and want to play him. And it’s, it’s really wonderful to see what happens when actors are put outside of their comfort zones to see kind of just that, that magic that can occur.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah. You know, I, as a former actor, can feel the magic in that already because it’s like, wow, I wasn’t expecting this, but here goes to the challenge and that’s what we all need is it’s the challenge.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yeah, you get pushed outside your comfort zone. We tell people it’s actor training without the cost of grad school because we have students come in and perform with us who’ve grown immensely in their craft. Who’ve done now 10 professional productions in a year with real working actors that you get to play off of and learn from and make mistakes with no consequences because it’s fun.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Yeah. Before we get too much further, what is your website URL? So people can tune in.

And then I also want to talk about. How much virtual you’re doing versus live stuff now.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yeah, absolutely. So Plague Mask Players.org is our website. We’re very active on Instagram. That’s kind of our main social platform is just Plague Mask Players. We post on there when we’re casting for actors for virtual productions and live, we’ll post workshops.

Our website has a join the. Under some of the drop-downs where you can see which virtual shows are coming up. We’ve got Don Juan by Moliere next week. And we’ll be announcing our fall season soon. So that’s a great way to come and watch it’s free or participate. It’s free.

Michael Van Osch: Fantastic. And so is Don Juan going to be virtual or is that going to be live or, and you’re doing some live though.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yes. So Don Juan will be virtual. We are going to do a virtual series in the fall as well, and we’ll be announcing those productions soon, which is very exciting. And then we’re doing our first live show in the fall in October.

And we’re doing As You Like It, and I’ll be directing that one. And we also have a virtual workshop coming up as well. That’s only $30. It’s with the incredible Sean Gan. Very experienced voiceover actor, teaching people about voiceover and that’s open to multiple countries. We’ve had people from Canada sign up.

So you can find info about that on our website as well. And that’s again, completely virtual.

Michael Van Osch: Wow, fantastic. When you do your live, where are you going?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: So Mainstage Irving has a space called their 222 Outdoor Theater, and they’d been very fortunate or we’ve been very fortunate, excuse me, that they’re going to produce the show for us and allow us to use their space.

It’s a great outdoor stage and we’re very excited and it’s safer that way too. So we feel more comfortable.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah, sure. Yeah. This whole notion of planning has been very interesting in the last year now. So I hear you very much into education too. So tell me what you do on that front, because if, when people check out your website and please do folks because it’s great you’ll see there’s so much going on.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that was really important to me from the get-go cause my mom is a musical director/teacher at a K through 12 private school. Growing up in the arts is making resources available for teachers for free. So we have every single one of our performances that are virtual completely recorded on YouTube for free.

We give those to teachers to say, Hey, if you’re studying Hamlet and you want to show your kids a scene, or you’re working in a theater class and a kid wants to see them on. Go use our productions. They’re good quality. We don’t stop and start their professional actors doing these shows. And so we have a complete library of all of those for people to use for free.

We also offer workshops quite a bit and they are paid, but we usually keep the costs incredibly low. 20 bucks, 30 bucks. So we’ve been offering so far, we’ve done a Shakespeare workshop. We just did a live stage combat workshop where we learned single sword combat through a lightsaber fight. So we’re trying to hurry up the educational offerings live and a virtual affordable, make them accessible and fun.

And again, just helping actors grow.

Michael Van Osch: That’s amazing. So just a rough guess here. How, since you started, how many actors or people in general, have you involved in your process in Plague Mask Players?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Ooh I mean, we’ve got 425 in our virtual group and I would say probably more than half of that has been in at least one show, one workshop, one, something Instagram contest with us.

So quite a few. It’s wonderful. They’re such a fantastic community of people. We have the chat on during our productions and everyone comments of just incredibly supportive things that people just need to hear of this. Person’s fantastic. Hilarious. Look at that choice. And so it’s really just turned into this supportive community for performers, just as much as an educational opportunity.

We even do an award show at the end of our seasons, where everybody votes on like best villain, we don’t have gendered categories. So we’ll do like best villain and best cameo, best death. And just again, it’s about honoring the actors that was Shea McMillan on my board’s wonderful idea. And we just love that sort of thing.

Making people feel good.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That’s great. So where do you see this company going?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yeah. So we want to continue to grow. We, as of a few months ago, became a 5 0 1 C3 registered nonprofit in the state of Texas. Yes. So we’re, we’re looking towards putting on more life seasons. We’ve got a lot of really fun creative takes on shows in the works.

Even our, as you like it. If you look at the character descriptions, it’s not traditionally what you would find, but I’m sure it’s still going to be fantastic. So we want to continue to offer a lot of diverse voices and diverse casting and productions, which there’s a big need for that right now. And continue to put on more, offer more, and just learn how we can listen better and support and grow our community virtually and otherwise.

But yeah.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Wow. What a great goal too. Would you ever consider in the future becoming or just doing some touring shows in different, different areas of the world?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: I think nothing is off limits for us right now. We were birthed from taking an impulsive, creative idea and making it happen and it grew into something international, which is incredible.

And so I think we don’t really want to limit ourselves. I think if we see an opportunity to support actors anywhere, we’d be open to that for sure.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well, how did you choose your board is what I wanted to ask? How did you choose your board? Because I know that’s a very important thing when it comes to organizations, whether you’re, you know, one, two years old or you’re 25 years old, you know?

So how did you go about that?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: So I posted in my private group and said, I need help. Who wants to? And the three of them were the ones who volunteered and not only volunteered but stuck with it, brought ideas to the table, created new things. Like I said, she came up with our bill, Billy awards, the Billy’s sorry, play on the Tony’s.

And they just. They’re wonderful people. I’ve actually worked with all of them before, professionally in DFW, even though they’re all over now. And so I had a good relationship with them and they were just. So passionate about what playing mass players is about, which is loving our people well and finding new ways to support each other well, and also just break down rules because we don’t care about a lot of established rules and roles, and let’s just do it different.

And there are those people who are like, great, here’s 12 ideas, and here’s the way we’re going to do this better. And it’s become kind of magic how it all worked out. We’re all very, very fortunate to work together. Perfectly, and we’re all very different personalities. So we balance each other very, very well.

Michael Van Osch: Well, congratulations. I mean, this sounds just like an amazing project and it’s not a project. It’s a, it’s an entity and it’s going forward. So, I mean, that’s fantastic. Do you have a favorite Shakespeare play or role that you’ve experienced?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Yoga was a shocking favorite. There’s been some that I have in my wheelhouse, probably like Paulina in Winter’s Tale that I didn’t know I’ve loved, but I mean, play Iago and I played Edmund in, in King Lear and Ooh, I love me some villains now, and it’s given me some, some fun times playing villains, which is really cool to see, you know, as you age, your type evolves.

And I guess mine’s evolving into the bad guys and I kind of like it.

Michael Van Osch: No, always fun. There’s always good meaty stuff in

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: there. You can’t leave that just to the guys. Gotta let some women play some of those roles too.

Michael Van Osch: Is there anything else that we should know about plague mass players before we let you go today on this rainy day?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: So we take new professional actors every single day. They’re only vetting questions we have or if they’re 18 plus even if you’re a student in school, we will take, you come perform for free. There’s no auditions, no directors no rehearsals. You just get to show up and perform and in love what you do.

So they can reach out to us via Instagram or go on our website if they want to join, but we’re happy to take everybody.

Michael Van Osch: Excellent. Excellent. That sounds great. Well, before I let you go, I have to ask you the question that I ask everybody. If Shakespeare was on this call with us and you got to ask him one question, what would you add?

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: A hard question. I think I thought a little bit about extending. You’re going to, you’re going to ask, and I think the question that comes to mind first, especially with how much diversity we have with our casting is where did all the inspiration come for? All these great female characters, you know, as a man, how did he capture that?

Did he have some women in his life that inspired Rosalind? And I want to know who they’re based on, where he got the ideas for them from. I think that’d be a really cool conversation.

Michael Van Osch: Yeah, absolutely. I do too. I like it. Well, Samantha, this has been great, Plague Mask Players, plaguemassplayers.org is the website.

Thanks so much for joining us today. Stay on the line here, but we’ll look forward to getting the word out about you however we can as well. And again, congrats on what you guys are accomplishing.

Samantha Calatozzo Cobb: Thank you. We’re very proud and glad to talk to you today.

Michael Van Osch: Thanks for joining HARK Journal too.

All right, well, take care. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.