Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat…

Sam Simon: So using improv in that moment, I was able to discover my own story that I had and I felt I needed to tell. 

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden, A podcast for the creative mind. StoryBeat explores how Masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire.

So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Samuel A. Simon, started his career in Washington, DC as a lawyer for Ralph Nader’s first advocacy group, becoming a part of the infamous Nader’s Raiders. He then spent 25 years as the head of a public affairs firm. In that work, he was often in the news appearing on Face the Nation, the Phil Donahue Show, The Oprah Winfrey show, Good Morning America, and many more.

Sam subsequently became a playwright and calls his playwriting and theater work his fourth age. His first play, the Actual Dance: Love’s Ultimate Journey through Breast Cancer was later turned into an award-winning memoir. In 2021, Sam was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Despite the enormous challenges of this diagnosis, Sam has become Dementia Man, a powerful advocate through theater, using his own experience as an inspiration to reshape the narrative surrounding cognitive decline. In his newest play, Dementia Man, an Existential Journey, Sam defies stereotypes and inspires audiences.

Just be aware, please, that today Sam is being joined by his wife Susan, who acts as his cognitive navigator. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a true honor for me to welcome the extraordinary advocate, playwright, and actor, Sam Simon, the story beat today. Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Simon: Thank you so much for having me, and I love my introduction.

I didn’t realize that all that about me. I’m just, 

Steve Cuden: you’re, you’re, you’re bigger than you know.  So let’s go back in time just a little bit. Which came first for you, your interest in law advocacy or the theater? 

Sam Simon: Well, you know, that’s a great question because the truth is that I did community theater first, so that’s interesting.

I hadn’t taught it quite, you know, in se time sequence before I was in the high school play. I play was, I remember Mama, I was Papa. I was in, I remember 

Steve Cuden: mama at USC when I was in school. There. There we go. I played Little Peter 

Sam Simon: Thor, Kelson. Um, so I, I really enjoyed community theater. I was never formally trained in acting or theater.

It, it attracted me. Mm-hmm. So it, it’s been a latent interest. Um, the other part of me was, I call it in my work, troublemaking. I almost think it’s genetic. I mean, even as a teenager, back in the, I guess fifties, I was listening to talk radio and I was getting angry at things. And in my work in this most recent play I talk about at 14, going down to the city council of El Paso.

Susan Simon: Mm-hmm. 

Sam Simon: We, I had to take the bus. I didn’t tell my parents. I had done quote research to find out that the 11:00 PM curfew for kids 17 and under Nelson Rockefeller thought they were unconstitutional and I was angry and I, funny thing is I just wanted to go do it. I didn’t realize that the next morning.

My rant was headlines in the morning newspaper, and my parents found out about it that way. But, you know, I, I, and even the Nader, the choice to go to work for Nader and other things I’ve done in my life, I have this, I, I, like I said, almost genetic urge to. Work for justice. 

Steve Cuden: But at at the same time, you’ve also had a career in which you were out front.

Sam Simon: Yes. 

Steve Cuden: You’re not a behind the scenes lawyer. You actually got out in front of people. Absolutely. 

Sam Simon: Absolutely. I laugh about some of it part, you know, I’m, I’m in a brand new field. I never was a figure in the, uh, medical slash memory. There’s a whole world out there. Um, you look at any career or any. Agency of some sort, and you’ll see they’re behind that person or thing you meet, there’s a trade association.

There’s a whole world out there. So I’m, I changed my focus once before in life and I learned, and I think Ralph Nader helped me understand this. Well, 

Steve Cuden: let’s, let’s talk about some of that. How did you choose to become a lawyer in the first place? Why law? 

Sam Simon: It was actually the choice of last resort. I did not know what I wanted to be, you know, seriously, it was, what else can I do?

I, I didn’t, my dad was a traveling salesman. Think Willie Lowman. I mean, people don’t remember that in the forties and fifties. People took out the backseat of a car, filled it with suitcase, Stacey filled with children and infants wear samples drive from little store to little store. Mm-hmm. That’s how they ordered wholesale.

Steve Cuden: And you didn’t want to do that, I’m guessing. 

Sam Simon: No, and it wasn’t. And then my mom, uh, you know, both pass many, many years ago. She had been a, a flamenco dancer as a young woman. And so performance is in your jeans. Maybe that’s where I came from. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe it’s from my mom’s side of it, because she, she was, she was a flamenco.

I still have her flamenco, I’m mean the castanets. And you know, she ended up becoming, as most women did, and the Type S woman. So eventually you go off and you 

Steve Cuden: become a lawyer. How in the world did you hook up with Ralph Nader of all people? 

Sam Simon: My parents wanted me to be like my brother-in-law who retired, by the way, as a two star general.

Ooh. But he married my second oldest sister when she was 18. He was West Point. It was safety. They were a bit of the, uh, depression era. Go into the government or the military and make it a career, you’ll get this great. They wanted that for me. And I went to ROTC and it wasn’t that far off, but this genetic anger or sense of justice was building and the Vietnam War.

I had already had my military obligation when the anti-war stuff was building up and, and so the lawyer part of it. I had a fight to get to go to law school instead of immediately to Vietnam, and I won. I, it’s a long story behind that. It was all appealed to the Pentagon to give me an exception. There were, 

Steve Cuden: what, what year was 

Sam Simon: this, Sam?

This was going to be 67. 67, so right in the middle of the Vietnam War War. And they told me, I, I, I’d gotten a scholarship. The ROTC started giving scholarships to RO TC full scholarships. And before I took my scholarship, I said, now I wanna go to graduate school. This won’t stop that. Right. And my, they call ’em Professor of Military Science.

This guy said, absolutely. Here, it’s in writing. I did it. And then they changed their mind and he took about big, I’ve had some moments in life where like, I’m sure we all have in some ways, where my PMS calls me. He says, I need to talk to you. Come in. Go in the office, he closes the door. I’m gonna show you a classified document that’s says for official use only, but I that counted as classified D.

But it said, we have decided that all scholarship students must go on active duty immediately upon graduation. And I was assigned the infantry. 1967, if I had, I am sure had I gone right out to the Army, to the Infantry Corps, I would’ve been sent to Vietnam and killed. I have no doubt about it. 

Steve Cuden: Probably stood a pretty good chance 

Sam Simon: of it, that’s for sure.

And you know, here’s a person who don’t remember his name, felt bad enough, says, I’m gonna prosecute an appeal because I know that we promised you and you relied on that. And this was August of 1967. And in three weeks I was either gonna go to Fort Benning or to Austin, and I got, I still remember the phone call, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for whatever has agreed to allow you to go to law school as an exception to standing policy.

I still remember holding the phone. How lucky are you? Yeah. Well, I’m alive because of that phone call. Yeah, I think that’s probably accurate. So my energy around both the Vietnam War, my best friend at the time, still a very close friend, was very anti-war. I saw him demonstrate and people try to beat him up as a result of it.

And, uh, there was, they were handing out literature one day and I called a mob come behind me and flipped it, their tape. So part of that built in me this sense of, you know, I a model my best friend. And I think that helped build the energy. So I, I ended up in law school, it seemed logical. I, I had an aunt, my mother’s oldest sister, I.

Leman, the 16th woman lawyer in Florida ever. Wow. One of the first women lawyers in Louisiana and one of the first female lawyers who was admitted to the federal bar in Florida. So I had a model there. She worked in El Paso. Not understanding that she was admitted to the bar as a legal secretary, but still so, so 

Steve Cuden: how do you then get to 

Sam Simon: Ralph Nader?

So, we’re in law school and it’s the anti-war, and it’s a, I’m in Austin, not a known as a, you know, ultra liberal, although at the time, you know, Johnson was president, he was from Texas. John Conley was a Democratic at the time, Ralph. So we, we had that, there was a small group of us. And actually there’s almost history here in my point of view.

And we were progressive, we were inherently liberal. We, we were, we had done, well, we on law, in law review, one of ’em was a fellow by the name of Joe Tom Easley. Joe Tom was a year behind us, but older than us, and he became a Nader’s Raider. He, for one summer, he went up to Washington to work for Ralph Nader.

So Na Raiders did. Federal agencies and wrote these big reports. Uh, people from the era may remember them. Um, they did studies of all the agencies. I’m old enough to remember, and Joe Tom came back. He and Ralph eventually became very close friends and he recommended Joe. Tom recommended three others of us.

Work for Ralph. Now I had a problem. I’m gonna graduate. Ralph Nader wants to hire me. The Army wants me in the JAG Corps after I graduate. Okay. Well, by 19, uh, 70, the war is winding down. I called the Department of Army, say, can I get an extension? ’cause the first public interest research group, the first uh, Nader Group law firm was you got a contract for a year.

They said, yeah, fine, but come when you wanna come. You know? So I had a sister living in, my oldest sister was a model for me. The late Marian Garel, Simon Marian, Simon Garel, she graduated University of Texas, undergraduate in journalism. She went to work for the National Student Association, NSA, which wasn’t her era.

Uh, she’s nine years older than me. Uh, would’ve been nine years older than me, right. 

Susan Simon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sam Simon: And so it was the act activist student group. They were accused of being communist in their day, and she worked in Washington and, you know, so I, I was catching some of that energy from my biggest oldest sister, Marian.

Steve Cuden: But, but in the meantime, your, your advocacy as a child and an advocacy through college and so on, that leads you naturally into a situation like a Nader’s Raiders. 

Sam Simon: Yeah, well, you know, and the, I think yesterday, or today is the 50th anniversary of Kent State, but Kent State happened while we were in law school and one of our professors and the three of us who went up to work for Ralph.

And there was gonna be a march in Austin and there was fear and the city council would not issue a parade permit. And there was this fear that it would be violence on the streets. I. We stayed up all night and drafted a writ of mandamus, which was filed in the morning with the federal court to order the parade permit to be issued to avoid another Kent state, and it was granted.

So we had this example of. Taking a stand and doing something and using the law and we said, I’m convinced we saved lives. You, you probably did that. It would’ve just been something else. And so that kind of energy, I loved it. I mean that because we’d sit up all night, I’m walking home from having done all that.

It must have been 9:00 AM or so. Been up all night and I looked down the street and I can see literally thousands of people had been. On either side. I say thousands, it felt like on either side of the street trying to stay on the sidewalks and the rman, David Moses granite and I could see them breaking out into the middle of the street.

And you didn’t talk about satisfaction for something, you were, it, it feels to me almost genetic. And this just helped bring that out. 

Steve Cuden: Alright, so then my question, because this show concentrates on creative process, how much do you think your work with Ralph Nader and then later in public affairs and your advocacy position has influenced what you’ve done with Dementia Man?

Is that where it comes from, that advocacy from that, that, uh, deep seated experience that you had? 

Sam Simon: Let me Yes. At a different time. And let me tell you about that. So I, I had a career in Washington. I still did community theater here in the DC area. Oh, you were doing community theater all along. All along.

Pieces of it. Acting or something else acting that moved me to improv. So there was a theater group in New York called Artistic New Directions. It’s still there. And they’re primarily improvisational theater. Mm-hmm. Not comedic, but theatrical improvisation. And I’ve been in a local show here and somebody says, you know, there’s a group, uh, over here that I, you might like, they’re doing some improv.

You might like that. I don’t know why the, the fellow actor said that, and I signed up for the class. And that maybe in some ways it was the beginning of. Improv changed my life. How so? It taught me how to be a human being. It taught me Yes. And in life. You know, if anybody listening wants it, do theatrical improv.

Take improv classes, learning how to practice in real time. Accepting all information given, adding to it. I mean, that includes listening. That includes avoiding the word know and, but, 

Steve Cuden: well, it’s the, the infamous improv cliche is, is that you, uh, it’s, yes. And, 

Sam Simon: and I learned doing that in my umma in some of my day-to-day work.

I was so lucky. I mean, I fortunate you, you fall onto these things. So artistic new directions had summer camps. I’m the, I’m still now I’m. Running a public affairs company that I’m the boss of. So I can take up whatever time off I want to, to go to these camps and, and, and my teachers. You may know some, I dunno if you do, I dunno if you knew, um, Gary Austin or knew of Gary Austin.

I know the name. He had founded the ground league. In LA and he was one of my teachers. Hmm. And then there was, uh, some folks from Second City, and I learned so much. Sometimes, by the way, it’s tough learning. I don’t know. You have some tough teachers, but I, Gary once told me, I, I didn’t know what I was doing out loud in front of everybody.

So, but I wanna go back to the, your other question. So I was having that theatrical training, the improv training at the same time. I was about 65. And a friend of mine. Long story, we don’t have to tell it all, but a minister had worked with me in media reform with na, you know, with some of my NA work, had breakfast me and told me that he had been hired to, uh, run a social justice ministry in New York, the Collegiate Church of New York.

The oldest church in America, uh, was setting up a social justice. Ministry. I was leaving my company and looking for something new to do and I was going to these, these summer things, and I a and D is in New York. We had breakfast and he tells me the church gave him a 10 year con, 1 0 10 year contract and $20 million over the 10 years to change the world.

And I said, can I come up and help? Wow. And well, so I would go up every other week. We live in the Washington area. Every other week I’d go spend five days in New York as a senior fellow to that, it was Bob, uh, his name is Reverend Robert Chais. A great guy. He’s still around. We’re still good friends, but the team he put together and to get social justice included musicians and actors.

Although I was the one of the stronger voices in that group to focus more on that side of things, and it was just a unique opportunity. I mean, right after I started, they were gonna, there was a, this tremendous immigration crisis in the Middle East. He was sending three young people to, uh, Syria and Iraq and the like to write a report.

I said, write a report. I don’t know why it was, send a playwright, send a dance company, send musicians. How do you really change hearts? You know, and then, and I learned it in this real time moment. I believe that if you really want to change a person, a decision maker, you need to change their heart. Then you’ve seen thousands of policy papers and the, and the odds of, you know, they’re gonna write this paper, and people would read it Instead, they had this dance company and they had this full theatrical presentation.

That kinda work. Can, can really put people in a position, they wanna do something different. 

Steve Cuden: How do you go about changing someone’s heart? What do you do? 

Sam Simon: You give them the, the emotional energy and urgency and ability to see the world differently and to understand the urgency of it. You know, often authentic voices.

But if you write a play that is based on what really happened and it’s emotional and you see people die from what’s going on and it’s supposed to 15 paragraphs on the one page, you know, and, and also I think music does that. And you know, it led me, so I was now every other week in New York, so now the a and d theater company that was part of, I get to go every Wednesday night.

I’m there twice a month to classes and create work. And so my wife, Susan now, my n uh, cognitive navigator in 2000 had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. 

Susan Simon: Hmm. 

Sam Simon: And I was a caregiver. And there was a moment in that journey where the doctors pulled me over and said, um, get ready. You know, we don’t think she’s gonna make it.

Now, it took me nine years to realize that I had what I called post-traumatic spiritual Disorder. And because of my work with Gary and this improv group, I didn’t, I had never written a play before, but there was an exercise Gary had where you had like four people in class and say, each of you have to talk for 20 minutes.

Go one at a time. Try it one day, try to talk 20 minutes without stopping. And in that exercise I started talking about what had happened with Susan and me and my experience. And I defined somebody who was actually a, a character on the play that I eventually wrote. So using improv and in the, in that moment, I was able to discover.

My own story that I had and I felt I needed to tell. 

Steve Cuden: But it’s interesting you had already been doing something like that before in improv Yeah. And so on. It wasn’t a completely new experience for you. Right. 

Sam Simon: I, it, it was, you know, it’s latent. It’s, you know, you know, it is. I, yeah, God, we could talk forever about various things, but, but maybe even since grade school I, or high school.

I was really a, an actor at heart. 

Steve Cuden: I, I’m gonna say it the way that I would say it to my friends, which is you’ve always been a ham. 

Sam Simon: Oh, that too. But that’s true too. You, you, you, boom, you got it right away. I’m the guy who, who raises his hand or stands up without raising his hand. I’ve always been, 

Steve Cuden: you have an, an outgoing personality and you don’t have any fear of standing up in front of people.

Which would, by the way, make you a very good advocate in court as well. Yeah. 

Sam Simon: I, no, and you learn that a little bit, so I don’t wanna, I, you know, we’re, I’m gonna turn 80, you know, I, that’s awesome you we a lifetime. But I was taught that actually the Nader folks were really in one way. So I was going from, oh, I know.

I was changing, uh, the field. I was going into media reform, telecommunications, and I. Boy, you know, they’re about to defund a public tv. They wanna defund public tv. You know, I, I had gotten into a safe government job, just like my parents wanted me to. And I was working at the Federal Trade Commission and on the hill for a while, and Ralph Nader comes up to me, calls me again, I ca he’s still a friend at 92, by the way.

Wow. And, uh, he says there’s an opportunity, Sam, there’s an organization called the National Citizens Committee for broadcast. It was being run by a fellow by the name of Nicholas Johnson. 

Susan Simon: Mm-hmm. 

Sam Simon: And Nick’s gonna leave, and I don’t want it to go under. Will you leave your GS 15 job and go take over the National Citizens Committee for broadcasting?

I’ll be on your board. We can pay you $20,000 a year. And I was making the 80 and they had 10,000 in.

Was a elite committee included Walter Cronkite that lobbied Congress to enact the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And they had succeeded and they had gotten Congress back then to create, in effect, the public broadcasting system and the mechanism to fund it. And I took over for a while.

That committee. Wow. The remnants of that committee that because it had ended in Cronkite, a lot of the big names fell off of it and I eventually changed it. ’cause this was the emerging new technology area. We called it the Telecommunications Research and Action Center Track, but I was in New York and I was being able to go to my theater group and continue to learn and experience.

Theater is a theatrical improv and, and improv. You have to be willing, you talk about allowed or you have to learn how to drop their constraints 

Steve Cuden: and enables you to think clearly on your feet. Except all information 

Sam Simon: given and add to it. 

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk for a bit about, uh, your current theatrical experiences.

Uh, you would not know this, but my mother, um, who’s no longer with us, but she had, she lived for four and a half years with Alzheimer’s. But I can tell you there’s no way that she could have done what you’re doing because once she went into that diagnosis, she was very far down the road. Yeah. And so do you think that working with your brain as a playwright and as a performer and so on has helped to slow the progression of the disease in some way?

Because you’re using your, your mind a lot? 

Sam Simon: I don’t wanna give the reason, I wanna acknowledge the truth that I, everybody, my care team, my doctors, my neurologist, believe that, that it is true that my work and my passion has helped moderate the, the rate of decline. And I’m early stage, and I am here in part because I have a genetic risk.

Uh, there’s a gene. I urge everybody to find out if they have it, if they’ve seen it in the family called a POE four. So I had the genetic risk. I was complaining bitterly about certain incidences to my internist who thought I was just a. Um, overeducated man overreacting to normal aging, and then I had some symptoms he couldn’t explain and sent me to a neurologist.

But, uh, so yeah, I, doing this work, being engaged has definitely. Uh, had a positive impact on my slowing the disease progression, 

Steve Cuden: because so many people, and I know some myself, so many people, as they get into their sixties and start to think about retiring, they turn their brains off. They stop reading, they stop thinking, they stop writing, they stop doing things that are mental exercises.

You’ve clearly continued on with it, and I, I would like to think that that’s helped you. 

Sam Simon: That seems to be the case that my progression is, well, I just, so too, it’s important to know it. My early diagnosis is critical because once I got to a formal diagnosis, and it’s a, just so everybody knows, they’ll listen to this, say, oh, you can’t have it.

I have three confirming opinions. They’ve done the. Uh, test of my, the PET scans with contrast to my brain. I’m amyloid positive. I do have it. And so I had both the risk at night and I’m trying to remember the point I was trying to make here so dramatically. Uh, well, well, okay. What happened though? So I had already been doing theater and I was having memory incidents and there was some distinct.

Symptoms that were, you know, scary and so I was getting diagnosed. I, I, I don’t know if you know, you may be familiar with aap. I started going as a solo artist to AAP in 2013 or 20. Yeah. 

Susan Simon: 20 or 

Sam Simon: 2014 solo artists don’t go to aap. But I did, and I, I’ve been going for a number of years, and my fellow artists, when I began to tell them that I was having a, I had a cognitive, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s, they said, write about it, put it on page, and on the stage.

Mm-hmm. And that’s where the, it wasn’t my first. Thought and I’ve since learned so much from performing it 

Steve Cuden: well, we’re gonna talk about that. I’m just curious, what are the challenges that you went through with cognitive issues as you were trying to write? Could you, uh, remember what you were writing or did you have to constantly go back and refer to it?

How did that work? Well, 

Sam Simon: a 

Steve Cuden: couple 

Sam Simon: of things. I was performing my prior play as I was developing this, right. We had a, um, COVID, uh, plague, what do you call it? A pandemic. Yes, we did have a pandemic. So I was actually performing the actual dance over zoom from my basement. Coincidence. I began to become unable to remember the lies.

Steve Cuden: You were doing it out of memory. You had memorized it. I, 

Sam Simon: I had it completely memorized. I see Susan was off to the side because we were at home. ’cause she wasn’t always traveling with me. It wasn’t at all my other performances. But she was off to the side, couldn’t be seen. And as I started to have problems, she could cue me and that may have even hidden the severity for for a while.

So it was a combination of. The encouragement of my theatrical group and having had the experience of seeing the power of theater, I, I can’t tell you how I call it. I actually think there should be a name. Maybe, you know, it existential theater life and death. There, there is existential theater and it is about the meaning of life in the end of the at, at the core of it.

And discovering that I, I, I’m so privileged to be able to do that and, okay, so the writing process, I might not be, remember, be able to remember where I am sometimes or where my keys are, or certainly names, but I didn’t have trouble remembering. Writing. I’m typing 

Steve Cuden: a speed typist. So this is an interesting point for me.

Do you think the act of writing helps to drum it into your head? 

Sam Simon: Well, I can’t remember. I can’t memorize it anymore. 

Steve Cuden: No, I understand that, but I’m saying that you, you’re saying you forgot what you were writing less than perhaps where your keys were. Yeah. So I know for a fact. For me that if I write something by hand onto a piece of paper, I have a tendency to be able to recall it more easily than if I, uh, am typing it so that the act of writing itself actually does something now that, 

Sam Simon: yeah, no, I’m just dysgraphic and, and was partially dysgraphic as a kid, I had poor handwriting.

I’m now dysgraphic. I’m a speed typist. 

Steve Cuden: You’re a speed typer, so was my 

Sam Simon: mother. I did, I typed papers in law school for others and made money. So I type and I’ve always done it. I’ve done it well, and that, that hasn’t gone away. No. And, and so it, the writing was not what to say and how to say it was, and so I’m very fortunate.

I couldn’t, I couldn’t spell Dramaturg, much less know what it was until I, uh, had one for the actual dance. And I said, I need to write a play about this experience. And went back to the woman, her name’s Gabrielle, my myself, and she, and she was my dramaturg for this. And the, and the process of writing, you know, is not only do you put it down, but.

Playing it and writing. Playing it, and writing. I think it’s a creative process. ’cause we, you know, I love that I learned from even doing it. 

Susan Simon: Mm-hmm. 

Sam Simon: It gives me new ideas. I get ideas from the audience reaction. You know, the best time of writing is when you have the test audiences, right? The, the, of course, the, the early groups, I mean, the whole first 10, 12 minutes of this dementia didn’t exist until we got feedback from a group of people.

Steve Cuden: You, you need those early audiences and that feedback and beta readers and all those kinds of things that are very helpful. 

Sam Simon: Yeah. And I, I was so, I was not a professional. I was learning. 

Steve Cuden: Well, you know what the difference is between a, an amateur and a professional. 

Sam Simon: The professional thinks they know it, know everything.

Steve Cuden: No, the professional gets paid. Mm. That’s the only difference. A professional, somebody who keeps at it, makes a living at it and all the rest of it. But, but there are many very, very fine amateurs in the world that don’t get paid. They just do it ’cause they love it. 

Sam Simon: And, and I love the impact. I don’t, I couldn’t imagine this, I couldn’t predict it.

I was doing it for myself. In both instances. Look, if you’re about to hold the person you love most in the world as they take their last breath, that is an existential moment. Absolutely. I had to come to, now Susan is an unlikely survivor, but the doctors were sure they had just, they discovered a, a post double mastectomy lump and, but boom, everybody goes dark.

And, and I had to imagine that, you know, I’ve been, I was told by one of the most. You know, the head of psychiatry at Sloan Kettering on oncological psychiatry. I can’t, I’ll never know what it’d be like to have lost her ’cause I didn’t. But man coming, anticipatory grief coming right up to the edge. So it gives you those experiences, but I I doing it theatrically through art and theater and telling a story.

Um, 

Steve Cuden: is that the power of theater? Is that you’re a storyteller? I think it’s 

Sam Simon: part it. It’s part of it. Well, yes. Telling in a way, and particularly universal stories. You know, there are people who see their own journey differently. As you’ll be able to tell your own story, and I learned mine differently. I learned from some of the audiences, uh, telling, but I, I didn’t know that this was happening.

Steve Cuden: What, what do you think you learned about yourself in the act of writing and then performing this play? What do you think you learned that you maybe didn’t know until you started to write it? 

Sam Simon: I learned how to, to put words to feelings and experiences. So my first one, the actual dance, I’m gonna steal my grand 22-year-old granddaughter’s Raz read Grandpa is about to go deep.

I learned what love really means. That was one that I learned what love really means. That’s a big deal. And I didn’t understand it until I was able and, and had to re retell. And so when it’s autobiographical, you don’t just retell the lines. You re experience the moments, and I learned from doing the play that the ultimate act of love is being able to hold someone as they take their last breath and that it is an.

Infinite gift to both sides of that process. Now I’ll repeat what this psychiatrist told me, but Sam, you didn’t do it. She survived. So you can’t really know. I know that. I know that. Love that. You know in the play, I said we became a singularity. We became one person, one soul. 

Steve Cuden: And you learned that in the act 

Sam Simon: of writing?

In the act of writing and performing. Yeah. I’ve written books and I don’t know that it’s the same thing. The audience interaction in these. This type of work is its own gift. 

Steve Cuden: One of the things that I noticed, ’cause I watched the video of Dementia Man, so I saw your performance on video. Um, and what I noticed from the writing of it and then the performance as well, is that despite all these things, you have not lost your sense of humor and you have not lost your sense of intelligence that didn’t go hasn’t gone away.

And so how important do you think it is for a creative person? I. Those two very vital things, you know, 

Sam Simon: but you’re asking me to be almost an academic who has a book and knows how to, is writing the story. Well, tell us what you feel about it. I find it, it happens. I, it’s experiential. You have to understand, you know, there are pieces of this that.

I’m doing something where people, I’m crossing my hands here where Susan and I have switched positions, and this is not a small thing. I was a care partner. I call it love partner to someone who had a, we thought a terminal diagnosis. I am now the person with a terminal diagnosis and she has the responsibility or.

Opportunity, however you wanna do it. So there’s an emotional overview overlay to what is happening. But I also believe, uh, and there’s the guy who wrote the book who said, this name’s escaping me, where, uh, you go on stage, you have to. All, all values to those who walk on stage. What’s his name? You don’t have to go to theater school.

You just go on, 

Steve Cuden: you’re not talking about David Mamet, are you? Yes, I 

Sam Simon: am. 

Steve Cuden: How about that? I plucked that one right out of the atmosphere somewhere. 

Sam Simon: Yes. Mamet. Yes. And, and, and, you know, it’s, it’s a form of improv that’s, I go back to the value of improv because it lets you do that. You, you are authentic to the moment and.

It changes you. It changed me, the actor, and it changes audience and it’s about the, the most important things in life, you know, that thing. And you know, it affects how we live every day, the story itself. So we integrated into, you know, there were, I did community theater actually, the more than I thought.

Now I’m thinking about it. Uh, and, you know, memorizing lines and being somebody else. I. Is different than when it’s your story. 

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s for sure. ’cause you’re telling your story. You’re not telling someone else’s story in character. And you know, I, what I do notice from watching the, the video again, is that you were carrying the play with you, but you had a huge amount of it memorized and you didn’t really refer to it all that often.

You weren’t reading it, you were just using that paper as a memorization crutch. Yeah. I think that that’s perfectly fine and acceptable for what you’re doing, but you had a huge amount of it in your head already. 

Sam Simon: It didn’t feel that much. It still doesn’t. I look at videos about there’s a every show and I feel like I have my eyes down all the time, but, uh, maybe that’s just the self credit.

Oh, 

Steve Cuden: I didn’t see it that way. I mean, you obviously refer to the paper here and there, but I didn’t see it as anything more than you getting out and talking to people eye to eye, which is, in this case, what you’re doing as a solo performer. And, and there’s no doubt 

Sam Simon: that as I performed. I became more and more comfortable again.

My Susan will will tell you that, and that I did begin. I don’t know exactly which performance, the fifth, I don’t know, or 15th. But I started to improvise to the audience as moments. 

Susan Simon: You messed me up. 

Steve Cuden: However, she said you messed up. You messed up your cognitive navigator is what you were doing. No, 

Sam Simon: he messed 

Steve Cuden: on the front row 

Sam Simon: with 

Steve Cuden: the script.

I, I, you could see that in the, in the, uh, video, you could see that that Susan’s sitting there and look, there have been 

Sam Simon: times where I, I lose orientation. She can pull me back. They may, I don’t know if there’ve been big moments. They’re usually fairly short, but they’re, I. Clearly moments I need. 

Steve Cuden: Well, well, I think the beauty of it is, is that you, the audience knows what’s going on.

Yeah. And so nobody’s thrown by that. Nobody’s sitting in the audience going, why is that? Why is he referring to someone else? Right. Why is he referring to the paper? No. They know why. Ultimately, it could have been scripted that way. 

Sam Simon: I’ll tell you about this. Yes, it could 

Steve Cuden: you, you could publish your play and someone else could perform it who has no cognitive issues.

Sam Simon: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, yes. You know, you did that with the actual dance. Well, in the actual dance, it wasn’t because of cognition, but you know, thi this goes to the nature of existential theater. They’re so intimate, um, topics. Um, I’ve been, was performing the actual dance and I’m a white Jewish guy and there’s.

Pieces in that play about, uh, our synagogue and like, but I performed once in a primarily almost all African American audience. It became clearer and Susan pushed me on this most, that we should have somebody who looked like the audience doing the show. It’s not that you couldn’t project yourself into somebody of a different race necessarily, but when you’re talking about such an intimate experience, you include culture in that.

So we, uh, um, he’s a friend and he, he and a professional actor, and he, African American, Chuck Abbasi, who performed as well for, for me. And it wasn’t exclusively one or the other, but it was a di, you know, we changed the script a bit. He was, 

Steve Cuden: is that play published? Yes. It’s online. Is Dementia Man gonna be published?

Sam Simon: Yes. The actual dance is available for licensing to local theaters or, 

Steve Cuden: well, so there you go. And so eventually people will perform Dementia, man. 

Sam Simon: Yes. 

Steve Cuden: Whether they have a condition like yours or not, they’ll perform it as something, as an, again, an advocacy play That’s very interesting to listen to. 

Sam Simon: Yes, yes.

And it is an advocacy. For sure. I mean, ’cause we argue for, among other things, getting rid of the word dementia even it’s, I’ve. 

Susan Simon: We 

Sam Simon: want cognitive navigators as available as curb cuts. 

Susan Simon: Mm-hmm. 

Sam Simon: And we also argue against the choice of a accompanied suicide. 

Steve Cuden: So I’m curious, I’m curious, you know, as you perform, are you a, a nervous person when you’re getting ready to perform?

Do you have nerves or are you pretty calm? 

Sam Simon: I’m, uh, I pretty calm. I wanna thank my breath teacher, Carol Fox Prescott as well. Gabrielle also did some breath work. I, I’m a big believer in breath work. Is that how you deal with pressure is by breath work? Yes. And that’s how I, I isolate and I work on my breath.

You know, I, I listen to my breath, I follow my breath, I empty my head and focus on breathing. I, you know, I can be in a room and I can roll on the floor if I don’t get dirty or just make deep movements. Always the breath. And she, I’ve been taught that, uh, it’s not nose breathing, it’s through the mouth now that, but that’s what I do.

But every perform, every performance I have to get ready and mo I have to empty it. I’m not nervous, but I have to be present. As that character, I am the character, Sam Simon. Yes, sure. And I honor the profession, I think in the process by doing that. Is that your main set of preparations 

Steve Cuden: for performance is breath?

Sam Simon: Yes. 

Steve Cuden: That’s remarkable. You don’t go through stretching or any kind of physical Well, 

Sam Simon: well, I don’t, I don’t separate the two because part of the breath work involves movement. I see. I could stand up here and show you, you know, because you start hair and you follow it and you bend and you can roll on the floor, um, costume, you don’t wanna do that, but, but yes, it involves movement, but the movement is in service.

Of getting out of the 

Steve Cuden: head. Getting out of the head. That’s the most important thing. Yeah. So that you can be, what classically for actors is called being in the moment. 

Sam Simon: Oh, absolutely. Being in the moment, being present and, and you, you know, it took a long time to understand the concept of following the breath, but it is listening to the emotional part of yourself that’s happening.

It’s not what line 12 or it’s like. You know where I am. This is the moment. This is, it’s real. 

Steve Cuden: Well, the nicest thing for you about doing this particular play is that it is your story. So if you do go off and wander in one direction or another, it’s still your story. 

Sam Simon: It’s the well, it’s the story for the, the audience sees.

Yes, it is it. It is my and I, you know, the most important thing is. I learned that I can see and understand my own story differently. 

Steve Cuden: Isn’t that interesting? You, you can see it almost as an outsider looking in. 

Sam Simon: Yeah. And understand my, I I, it can be shocking sometimes that it’s like, oh, now I understand what was happening.

And it’s from both the performance and the audience. Interactions, or maybe somebody said, we always do a top feedback, which is different than big Broadway. We always do feedback after a performance, you know, so we’re best for intimate theaters because we think there’s so much emotion built in for many in the audience, not because of the, of the topic and because of the issues.

And we do learn from that too. Well, sure. I, I. Think, I’m just trying to remember. I wish I could pull up, but, but you know, I learned so much too from the audience discussions. The situation through their eyes or their experience. Of course they will. And every audience will be a little bit different and then they’ll express it and I’ll hear it.

I say, that’s right. 

Steve Cuden: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have been having just an absolutely fascinating conversation with. Uh, Sam Simon and uh, his cognitive navigator, Susan, who’s been alongside for the ride. And we’re gonna wind the show down just a little bit now. And I’m wondering, in all of these experiences you’ve had, whether as an advocate or with Ralph Nader or in community theater or in doing your plays and writing them, can you give us a story perhaps that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat.

Strange or maybe just plain funny that has happened to you along the way? 

Sam Simon: Oh, well, I, I do wanna say the, the ahas for me, and, and I think it happened with, uh, dementia Man, and it was during, during a, a rehearsal with the small audience of people, right. And, um, it was finding somebody in the audience that. I had been through the same thing and it didn’t sound that weird, but in the conversation it’s like, oh, so that’s what happened to me and I said it out loud and, and you know, it took a while to get everybody back together.

Um, and, but it’s an encouragement by the way. Actors and others should not be afraid to do that, and don’t become so convinced of that, of what we’re doing that we can’t learn. You’re saying don’t get stuck in what it is. And, 

Steve Cuden: and that 

Sam Simon: it 

Steve Cuden: can, all of a sudden it can be just the opposite. Yeah, for sure. It can be just the opposite.

And you need, and a performer I think needs to know the play or what you’re doing well enough that you can go in various emotional directions. 

Sam Simon: Absolutely. You know that. Thank you for that. If, if I’m worried, if I’m too worried about am I getting this right, is that the right I should have done? I can’t hear even the internal.

What was it one time too on, on the Dementia Man where it just, it came out differently and it’s because it, it felt different at the moment. 

Susan Simon: Mm-hmm. 

Sam Simon: You know, and, but I have enough confidence to do that. Absolutely. You’re very well prepared. Yeah. And it, it happens because that in the moment. Is what’s real’s 

Steve Cuden: real That, that, that’s what makes it beautiful to watch is that in the moment it’s really real or feels real, even if it isn’t, but if the actor can get there, that makes it so special.

Sam Simon: Yeah, I, I, you know, I’ve fallen in. The other thing is I’ve fallen in love with this work, 

Steve Cuden: and that’s helpful. I would think 

Sam Simon: I couldn’t have imagined even, you know, grandpa goes deep. May, may, but again, so during the actual dance, Susan and I are, the American University had their students and they were doing a film on people who’d done some the show I.

Of the couples that had, they were filming to show what community theater among people show, you know, theater of of meaning was, at any rate we had, we were sitting next to each other. They had finished filming us and one of the young ladies walks up to who had been there and she looks around and making sure nobody’s seen her, and she came up to us and said, you guys seem to be so in love.

What’s your secret? And you know, my first temptation is yes dear, you know that? Yeah. Yeah. But there was something so serious about her, the person, the young lady asking the question felt like we had, what was the answer? And I’ll offer it because I think it’s also, we said a sacred promise, uh, there, and I do believe in that.

But you know, we didn’t walk into this. Moment thinking about that question, what the answer should be, it’s in real time. What’s the secret of your relationship and, and for anybody out there? We, we’ll be married 59 years in August. Wow. Good for you. And Hay World. There were some up and down years. 

Steve Cuden: I don’t think there is such a thing as a 59 year marriage without a few up and down years.

Sam Simon: So, but in real time, I love it. And that’s what theater is, right? It’s real time. 

Steve Cuden: It is real time, and it, and it’s live and it’s very, very personal when you’re watching it. 

Sam Simon: And then you get asked this question and you know, there’s so many. So we had a sacred promise that we promise. And I, and I believe that is that we had a responsibility to make it 

Steve Cuden: work.

Well, I think that’s really terrific and, and, you know, uh, good on you for getting through 59 years together. I mean, that’s, you know, how many people can say that. So, last question for you today, Sam. Um, you’ve given us a huge amount of very interesting advice to chew on already, just in your explanations of things.

But I’m wondering if there’s a single solid piece of advice or a tip. Perhaps people may ask you how you do it, what you tell someone who may be starting out in the business or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to the next level. 

Sam Simon: The most important piece is don’t stop. Don’t give up. I told earlier that, you know, so apap, this big theater conference, I went to this big conference in New York.

There are 5,000 people. There are all the big. You know, Broadway performance touring. Every theater, big theater in the country goes to it. They meet the new talent that’s out, out there among other things. And I was told, I was advised because, look, I’m going there. I don’t have an agent at the time. I’m this one guy by myself.

You know, I’m the typical, I have the best new work out there. They’ll see me and they’ll, everybody will book for me. The advice I got then, and I, I still use it now and said, you’ve gotta come back over and over again. They have to know you’re, you’re in a new profess, you’re in this profession, you’re reliable, and that you, you have something of value.

So this, they have confidence, but most importantly, don’t stop. You have to go over and over and over. You know, keep showing up, keep doing your work, because I’m gonna say this to most people. If you keep doing it, it will be great work. It, nobody, nobody really shows up one time and all of a sudden is fabulous.

And I love the fact that there was one guy, one guy at apap so have to know there are 5,000 people, the big companies. There’s this old guy like the A dot on the on the blackboard at best. And there was one other, there was another very long time well-known magician and performer there, and he would sort of sneer at us and stuff.

About my fifth year going to apac, I, I walked past his booth and he comes out and says, Hey Sam, I’m hearing some really good stuff about your play. And it was like, ah, I’ve been at it long enough and I think that’s good. Well can happen. Don’t be discouraged too. And I, you know, I don’t know if I ever hit a time that I felt like I shouldn’t be doing it, but, and I’m lucky because the biggest barrier right, is resources.

I’ve been very fortunate in that I got a couple of grants from New York, from a couple places that were unique to who I knew and where I was. Uh, but I didn’t stop and then I fundraised on my own. There’s a great group in New York called Fractured Atlas, that is my fiscal sponsor. So there are donors who get tax deductions.

So, you know, a self-producing a artist, not only am I one man, but I have to create my own business infrastructure. So you’ve gotta fall in love with your work. That’s another way to say it. 

Steve Cuden: Well, that was a great big bunch of wonderful advice all in one batch there. And I think that that’s. Very wise, very powerful stuff because you for sure will not succeed if you give up.

Yes. So you have to keep going and that’s the way that you get to where you’re trying to go. 

Sam Simon: And the one that I thought I was gonna say, and now just came back to me, so when I was starting on, I had a, a small team in New York. I never produced a play officially, but I now had a dramaturg director in a group and we were working together.

And as we were starting, I, what I was hearing was, well, this is how we should do it, but what can, but we can’t afford that. So what else? And I said, stop, don’t assume we can get whatever we need if after we know what we should do to make it the best. Then and can’t. We can cut down then, but don’t start off lower or cutting.

Imagine you have every resource you need and how should we do it, and then we’ll work back from that. It’s a mindset for your team, not only yourself. I don’t know that I would ever been able to do what I was able to do if we said, well, we’re just a small old group and we can only do this and that. We can, we can do anything.

Now how do we get there? What is the best product we can create with what we need? And I think that among. All the things. One single piece of advice is as you’re, uh, uh, new to the field, you’re, whether you’re creating something new, start by planning that you have every access to whatever you need to do it the best way.

That, by 

Steve Cuden: the way, is a great way to think about writing. Write as much as you need to, write as big as you wanna write it, and then worry about paring it down later 

Sam Simon: that I, I have a writing coach too, and that’s a variation on her. She calls it. Um, oh, I call it a dirt. This is a terrible, she, she said, I write me a, a something letter or letter.

I called it a dirty letter, which is to say, just write, write, write, write, write. Correct and then get it out there. Correct. I, again, I playwright me, Sam, but it would never, I. Never on the agenda and yet. 

Steve Cuden: Well, you’re a play right now, Sam, whether you like it or not. Well, 

Sam Simon: thank you though. I love this conversation.

We could go on forever. 

Steve Cuden: Sam, this has been an absolutely terrific, I, I can’t thank you enough for your time, your wisdom and your energy. Great energy for everything you’ve got going on. And I wanna wish you much health in your journey as you carry forward. Uh, and I thank you for your time tonight on the show.

Sam Simon: Well, thank you very much. 

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you are listening to. Your support helps us bring more great story beat episodes to you. StoryBeat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, tune in and many others.

Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.