Breaking the Curse
By Dakota Parks for Inweekly
Asia Samson is cursed. Well … maybe.
According to his dad, a generational curse strikes the firstborn son of every generation in their family, bringing failed marriages, unrealized dreams and the sense that life never quite turns out the way it’s supposed to. Samson, a spoken word poet, performer and Northwest Florida Poet Laureate, isn’t so sure.
But the idea of a family curse became the starting point for “CURSED *maybe:” a one-man comedy, poetry and storytelling show presented by Emerald Coast Writers, exploring the strange things families pass down and the experiences that shape us.
“I may not have gotten to where I thought I would get to in life, with fame, fortune and Netflix talk shows, but I don’t consider that a curse,” Samson said. “I’m like, wow. I got to do what I love for a living, and my dad does too. He’s an architect and loves his job, and in my head, I’m thinking, what makes you think that that’s not successful?”
Samson has spent much of his career performing poetry onstage, touring over 2000 college campuses. His work has reached audiences through platforms including HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam,” and he’s built a career around connecting personal experiences to the hardships people recognize in their own lives.
When Emerald Coast Writers approached him about publishing a book to mark the culmination of his poet laureate tenure, Samson pitched the one-man show he’s been writing in his head for the past 16 years.
“If you know me, my performances have always been onstage,” he said. “The book thing has never been a thing for me. And if I was going to write a book, it would probably be more of a novel than it would be a poetry book. So, I asked them, ‘Since I’m a spoken word poet—instead of a book, what if I produce a one-man show that I can show at a theater?’ Because that’s where my strength is.”
The idea was approved, and Samson got to work, creating the show’s promotional flyer before he’d even started writing it.
After a phone call with his father, now in his 70s and preparing for the next stages of his life, Samson found himself revisiting conversations about their family’s supposed generational curse. Suddenly, he had the framework for his one-man show.
“It just came out,” he said. “The story just came out. I’m telling you, it came out within three days of me just sitting there and going under that one theme. The pressure kicked in, and I wrote without any second thoughts, without doubting myself, without overthinking anything. The flow just came out, and I looked at it, and I was really proud of it.”
Although “CURSED *maybe,” incorporates poetry, Samson didn’t want to spend months writing new poems and memorizing them for the show. Instead, he returned to his existing work, pulling lines and passages from poems that fit the stories he wanted to tell. The result isn’t quite like a traditional poetry performance.
“Basically, it’s taking the poem and stretching it into a story to make it more of a monologue than it is a poem—without the rhymes, without all the performance of poetry,” he said. “It’s just going to be me telling stories, like you’re getting a behind-the-scenes look of how I wrote the poem.”
The show’s blend of humor and storytelling also reflects Samson’s longstanding interest in one-person performances. Early in his poetry career, he watched a lot of spoken word poets including Anis Mojgani and Andrea Gibson, along with work from “Def Poetry Jam” and Button Poetry. Over time, touring and performing poetry so frequently left him less interested in watching poetry in his downtime.
Stand-up comedy and solo shows became a way to unwind, particularly John Leguizamo’s “Freak” and Mike Birbiglia’s comedy specials, which unfold more like personal stories than a succession of jokes.
“I’m not trying to make everyone sit for an hour just to be sad,” Samson said. “There are so many hilarious stories in my life that I want to tell them, and I don’t even have to write jokes. It’s just the way my mom talks to me, the way my dad talks to me, the way life unfolds. I’m like, this shit is hilarious, and I don’t have to write jokes about it. I just have to pay attention.”
Woven throughout the overall humorous show is treatment of heavier topics. The family’s supposed curse took on a different meaning for Samson after his younger sister died. His father saw the loss as further evidence that something was wrong with the family.
“Dad, you keep fighting for this vision of what a family looks like, and you’re missing the actual family that we have now,” Samson recalled telling him.
“You know, my parents divorced, I lost my sister, I’m a cancer survivor, my wife and I had multiple miscarriages before finally having our first kid,” Samson explained. “He was born with neurofibromatosis, and he has learning delays, ADHD, things like that. These are all central themes of the show. It’s hard enough to deal with one of those things. It’s a crazy thing when you’re dealing with all of them.”
But Samson still doesn’t see them as a curse. Instead, he hopes audiences will recognize something familiar in the stories, even if their circumstances are different. The show asks what happens when life feels like it has veered off course, when the future you expected doesn’t arrive and the hardships keep accumulating.
“I think the stuff that I went through is life stuff,” he said. “For those people that think the world is always against them or out to get them, hopefully this show will give them hope that maybe it’s not as bad as it seems, or maybe it is, but there’s also a light at the end, a way out; or maybe you just need to shift your perspective.”
The show arrives as Samson wraps up his tenure as Northwest Florida’s Poet Laureate. During his time in the role, he helped send a team to the Southern Fried Poetry Slam, a goal he was proud to accomplish, and organized workshops and other programming. He wishes he’d had more time to do more, but says the experience also helped push him toward finally bringing “CURSED *maybe” to the stage.
For audiences, Samson sees the performance as a chance to spend an evening with stories that are funny, painful and recognizably human. He recommends it as a date-night outing, with the caveat that some of the subject matter may not be suitable for younger viewers.
More than anything, he hopes people leave feeling that whatever they’re facing, they aren’t facing it solo.
“I try to show all my audiences, like, yeah, this sucks, but hey, guess what? What you’re going through sucks too, and you’re not alone,” he said. “I think that’s why a lot of people gravitate sometimes to my poetry, because of that exact thing, and I’m hoping that is what this show will do for them.”
CURSED *maybe: The One Man Show of Asia Samson
WHAT: A hilarious and thought-provoking storytelling show exploring the strange evolution of generations
WHEN: 7-9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30
WHERE: Saenger Theatre, 118 S. Palafox St.
COST: $10 for non-members; free for Emerald Coast Writers members
DETAILS: @theasiaproject, zeffy.com/en-us/ticketing/cursed-maybe-the-one-man-show-of-asia-samson
