While a Resident Artist at the Roundhouse, Sam founded and ran Cushion Collective, the venue’s longest-running resident cabaret and performance art collective. Sam both produced and hosted all of Cushion’s shows and events, as well as performing in them.
Cushion debuted to a packed-out Yard Theatre with the variety show Cushion & Co. Cabaret as part of Hackney WickED Art Festival, sold out the Roundhouse’s Sackler Space with the variety show What the F*ck is Love?, turned it in to the packed-out club night WTF is Love (In This Club?) for Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club’s main space (along with their Hallowe’en special HALLOKWEEN!), and brought it to the Grand Palace of Entertainment at Bestival, where they were the official Catwalk Comperes for the festival’s Fancy Dress Competition, hosting the Heats and Main Stage Finals.
They were the resident entertainment troupe at Camden Market at events such as Lock Live and Summer Nights Market, worked with MAC Cosmetics for their MAC Backstage series, and were Company in Residence at Finger in the Pie.
In December 2018, Cushion returned back home to Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club for a one-off festive reunion, Happy Hollygays, which saw the return of Sam, Scarlett Lassoff, Jasmine Shigemura Lee, Hannah Davis, Sophie Wakefield, Chris Sav, Oberon White, and the Cushion show debuts of Billy Hicks and Lucia Pazzini. The show was a proper cushy comeback, which ended with a bouquet of flowers being given to host Sam at the curtain call, which then kicked off a proper cushty Christmas party.
Cushion Collective are Sam Reynolds, Scarlett Lassoff, Jasmine Shigemura Lee, Fauve Alice, Hannah Davis, Polly Beck, Felix Huxtable, and Sophie Wakefield, with the Cushion & Co. cohort Gerald Curtis, Jessica McKerlie, Joana Nastari, Chris Sav, Balthazar Mattar, Izzy Tennyson, Oberon White, Tallulah Haddon, Billy Hicks, and Lucia Pazzini.
Sam and Jasmine also perform together as Cushion Eurasian Society.
Sam also presented, produced, and edited Cushion’s monthly radio show, Cushion Cabaradio, on Roundhouse Radio, now known as Transmission Roundhouse, which was included in the fifteen-minute entry with which Roundhouse Radio won Best Grassroots Production at the Radio Production Awards 2015. All six episodes are available below on Mixcloud, with the first three also below on SoundCloud.
Sam Reynolds 