Sam Mossler
Local Actor Leaves Legacy of Love, Learning, and Perpetual Growth
Sam Mossler’s long list of talents—from acting and writing to ukulele strumming, cocktail shaking, and deep listening—seems to have included a knack for prophecy. In a college application essay, the Bradenton-born creative spoke of his consuming passion for the arts and his vision for a life immersed in stagecraft, which would culminate in a scholarship for future generations of artists. Late this past spring, not one but two young thespians became the inaugural recipients of scholarships newly established in Mossler’s memory.
The Sam Mossler Artistic Spirit Award grants full tuition to a Florida Studio Theatre (FST) School student who demonstrates “outstanding character, empathy, and courage to create.” At Booker High School’s Visual and Performing Arts theater program, the Sam Mossler Memorial Scholarship awards a distinguished graduating senior $5,000 to pursue the next phase of their arts education.
Kaity Cairo, the 2021 recipient of the Sam Mossler Memorial Scholarship, will enter the undergraduate theater program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), this fall. Though she never met Mossler, Cairo says she learned a great deal about him as a remarkable artist and human through the scholarship application process.
“The thing that I admire most about Sam is the love that he inspired in his life, either through his art or just being himself,” Cairo says. “I hope to have some of his qualities one day.”
Mossler’s heart suddenly gave out as he slept during the wee hours of October 21, 2020. He would have turned 46 this August.
“It’s so shocking, still, and the shockwaves are so long,” says Nicole Hancock, Mossler’s life partner. “Besides just me losing my partner and my love, his death has affected so many people and continues to. … It only took five minutes with Sam to grasp what an empathetic, kind, loving man he was. He touched everybody he came in contact with.”
When Mossler came to FST at age 8 to start his acting training, Kate Alexander, FST’s associate director at large, was among the first (after Mossler’s parents) to recognize that Mossler was meant for the theater.
“It wasn’t like his talent was being honed,” Alexander remembers. “He already was so talented at that age. The other thing that was so clear was that he completely fostered the talent of everybody else around him.”
Jay Handelman, the arts editor and theater critic for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, had just begun covering local theater when Mossler was cutting his baby teeth on the craft. Handelman says he rarely reported on youth theater, but Mossler made a lasting impression on him with a capacity beyond his years for humor and maturity. After graduating from Florida State University in 1997, Mossler took the plunge into both actors’ meccas of New York and Los Angeles before returning to Sarasota—and his artistic incubator of FST—in 2016.
“It was kind of delightful when he came back and started performing again,” Handelman says, “because it was nice to be reacquainted with this guy and to know that what I saw in him as a kid wasn’t a fluke.”
In addition to performing in FST productions, Mossler also served as a teaching artist in the FST School, work he described as soul food. Adam Ratner, the lead teaching artist at FST, shares a similar full-circle journey with Mossler, his best friend from childhood and fellow member of the FST School’s earliest cohort.
“As a teacher, Sam embodied everything that is the spirit of Florida Studio Theatre and what we pretty much osmosed growing up, which was all about truthfulness onstage,” Ratner says. “He really found the core of what his students needed to be as artists. And what I mean by ‘artist’ doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to go off and perform in the theater, but just the artistic kernel that is in each of us to really be able to express ourselves.”
Handelman called Mossler “captivating” in Kunstler, his final and arguably most ambitious performance on the FST stage. On March 16, 2020, the day after Kunstler closed, FST announced it would suspend all performances as the country startled fully awake to a pandemic. Jason Cannon, an FST associate artist, directed Mossler in the titular role of legendary defense attorney William Kunstler, and remembers a prescient conversation several weeks into lockdown.
“He said to me, ‘Jason, if I never get to act again, I’m good. I am fulfilled. I have seen the mountaintop,’” Cannon recalls.
A running joke throughout Kunstler is that the courtroom firebrand was a big hugger. So, too, was Mossler in real life. In the final scene, the law student who serves as Kunstler’s foil in the two-actor play recounts outcomes of his high-profile cases and the end of his life.
“In the last moment, Kunstler calls out from the darkness, from beyond the grave, telling this young student, ‘No, no, no, you still don’t quite understand,’” Cannon says. “And he walks back onstage into a spotlight. He doesn’t say a word to her. He steps back out from beyond death, from beyond the black void. He just opens his arms as if to hug her, and hug the audience, and hug the world. And that was the last image of Sam onstage.
“It’s ridiculous how fitting that is for him.”
To learn more about the Sam Mossler Memorial Scholarship and support the secondary education of the Booker High School Visual and Performing Arts Program’s emerging actors, visit the scholarship fund’s website: KeepEvolvingPlease.com
Make a donation to Florida Studio Theatre’s Sam Mossler Memorial Scholarship fund here: tickets.floridastudiotheatre.org/donate/i/sammosslerscholarship
