The Flick

Sam is described as a white man in his mid-thirties who wears a Boston Red Sox cap, a telling marker of his working-class identity. Though he has worked at The Flick longer than any of the other employees, he has been passed over multiple times for a promotion, hinting that the owner prefers to arbitrarily promote people he likes or finds attractive. Ironically, Sam may be more financially, socially, and emotionally reliant on this job than any other character in this play; thus, his failure to be upwardly mobile may be read as an extension of similar (perceived) failures in his personal life.

Like Avery, Sam lives with his father; however, unlike Avery, Sam does not have the option of falling back on a college education. His parental living situation is also distinct from Avery’s as it is the direct result of a tumultuous break-up (from a co-renting relationship that Rose implies was sustained, in part, as a matter of financial convenience). Though Sam is preoccupied with romance and dating, he appears to seek out partners who are distant or unattainable in some way, pursuing an online relationship (with a trapeze artist who may or may not be fictionalized) and an obsession with Rose, whom he believes is a lesbian.