​BIOGRAPHY

Samantha Galarza is a bilingual afro-indigenous Puerto Rican SAG-AFTRA screen actress, writer, performance artist, educator, and podcaster. As an art-ivist, someone who creates work through an activist lens, her performances explore: queer identity, gender, generational trauma, systemic and internalized "isms," substance abuse, immigration/migration, and the U.S. prison industrial complex. She has written/performed original works throughout the country and internationally, in Mexico, Brazil, and Canada and her work was published in the Lambda Literary Award winning "Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy." Ultimately a storyteller, her dream is to bridge the gap between mainstream media and progressive "de-colonial" political art. She made her directorial debut with Eddie's Perejil, a one man show written and performed by Edward Paulino, that is currently touring. 

Samantha graduated summa cum laude from Rutgers University with a double major in Latino & Caribbean Studies, Women & Gender Studies and minor in Sociology. She is alum of the NALAC Leadership Institute, the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ EmergeNYC program and a fellow of Guillermo Gomez Pena’s La Pocha Nostra, Take a Breath, and EmergeLab residency. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast Latinas en Queerantine (https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187249), co-founder of the queer NY based performance art collective A Beautiful Desperation (abeautifuldesperation.carbonmade.com), and Alternate Roots member.