Samantha and Marco DiGeorge’s Theater on the Edge makes an eagerly anticipated comeback

Theater on the Edge exploded onto Orlando’s arts scene in 2016, earning instant acclaim — and my 2017 nod for “Best New Theater Company” — for their intimate interpretations of intense dramas like David Mamet’s American Buffalo and Stephen Belber’s Tape. TOTE’s trademark “cinematic” style, built on artistic director Marco DiGeorge’s Meisner-influenced acting and artistic designer Samantha DiGeorge’s hyper-realistic sets, birthed a series of theatrical experiences that were more akin to stepping inside a film.

But after a string of successes, the company’s output came to an abrupt halt after late 2022, because Samantha was diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Thankfully, her cancer has now been in remission for a year, and TOTE is making an eagerly anticipated comeback with Anna Ouyang Moench’s Birds of North America, running April 12-May 18 at their south Orlando studio.

The DiGeorges were rehearsing a short play for their Truthful Acting Studio, which provides most of the talent for TOTE’s productions, when Samantha first felt something wrong with her neck. “I thought I had strained it when I was yelling,” she recalled during my recent conversation with the couple. “Then I was like, ‘Hey, what’s this lump here?’ I thought I had pulled a muscle.” A CT scan, a biopsy, and a lumpectomy soon revealed stage 2 lymphoma throughout her upper body, which she combated with six months of chemotherapy.

“I went into fight mode. I was like, ‘All right, let’s do it. What do I gotta do?’ And I did it.”

However, surviving cancer came with some unexpected emotional aftershocks. “People are like, ‘All right, you’re in remission, congratulations! Let’s go back into life!’ And I’m like, ‘No, you don’t understand, this is rough,'” she shares, citing newly curly hair and depression as post-chemo side-effects. “But getting back into the theater has been amazing.”

For their first show back, TOTE is forgoing their signature cinematic style in favor of their version of a stripped-down “black box” presentation. The impetus for the aesthetic shift was saving stress on Samantha, who until a few months ago didn’t have the physical strength in her hands to close her fists. But it also gives the company an opportunity to put on shows more frequently than their usual labor-intensive style would allow.

“We started Theater on the Edge for the acting, not the cinematic theater that it turned into,” says Marco, explaining that they intend to mix-and-match production styles going forward. “We can put the focus really on the performance. To me, in black box the acting has to be stellar, because you don’t have all the other niceties of everything else.”

The script for Birds of North America was first brought to TOTE by founding member and executive director Allan Whitehead, who will play birding ecologist John against Elaitheia Quinn as his conservative daughter, Caitlyn, in the decade-spanning drama.

“It’s this father and daughter that have struggled to connect sometimes on deeper issues; they don’t really know how to talk to each other, but they find a commonality in birding,” says Marco. “It’s really a relationship piece based in a parent and child … the things that we want to say, but have a hard time saying.”

Initially, this two-character play was supposed to be staged on a black-painted floor with a few simple pieces of backyard furniture, but Samantha couldn’t resist procuring black velvet curtains, black carpeting and a mosaic patio table, creating what she terms “cinematic black box.”

“My hand started itching a little bit, and fire started just coming up inside of me,” says Samantha. “I started getting really emotional, and stuff just started coming up [and I said] can I just play a little bit, [and] do Sam’s version of black box?”

Next up for TOTE after Birds will be this summer’s fully cinematic staging of Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, a “novel in dramatic form” that will again feature Whitehead, this time playing a suicidal professor whose life is saved by a Black ex-convict, played by newcomer Daniel Bentley.

“It’s more of an existential type of experience, a discussion about life and death and what matters and what doesn’t,” says Marco.

That type of edgy material sounds tailor-made for TOTE’s ethos, which Marco passionately describes as being modeled on Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

“Even though [TOTE’s artists are] volunteering their time, the quality we want is as if we’re up on Off-Broadway [or in] Chicago,” says Marco. “I always say, would this be worth a $100 ticket if we were up in New York? And that’s the work ethic we want to put into it.”

Even more importantly, the theater has helped bring the DiGeorge’s joy and “passion” back, after several traumatic years. “I just want to keep having fun,” says Samantha. “I just want to keep being creative and having fun, and providing our patrons a full immersive experience.”

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This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2025.