Hassan Jamal: About the Artist

Click here to listen to his interview.

Hassan Jamal is a Los Angeles based actor, playwright, poet, and director.  As the creator of the LA Subway Shakespeare Project, Hassan shoots and directs short scenes from plays by William Shakespeare in places in Los Angeles where they have never been performed before. In the train station parking lots, on train platforms, at train station entrances, and sometimes actually on the trains of LA’s new light rail and subway METRO system! His play, “Dark Comedy”, about a fictional meeting between Paul Robeson and Lincoln Parry, better known as Stepin Fetchit was featured at the First Annual NESONA Short Play Festival in Los Angeles in 2017. Hassan’s film, “The Poets,” which was made in the middle 1990s gives the world a two hour glimpse at the poetry scene in the East Hollywood section of Los Angeles. It centers mostly around The Onyx Cafe that was a hub for the local artist community of the day. The film was screened at the 1995 AFI Film Festival and last year at Beyond Baroque Literary Art Center in Venice Beach, California. “The Poets” was also included in a package given to the UCLA archives by LA publisher, editor, poet/actor SA Griffin. Hassan was a cast member of the groundbreaking theater production, “The Lower Depth,” where he played, The Baron, that premiered in Los Angeles in 1990. It was produced by the Homeless Writer’s Coalition and played to the homeless community in the Skid Row section of Los Angeles, before moving to its permanent home, The McCadden Place Theater in Hollywood, CA. The Maxim Gorky play was updated by the brilliant San Francisco theater director, Michael McGee, from 1900 Moscow to late 1980s Skid Row Los Angeles. Hassan has studied with Ed Cambridge and (Commedia dell’arte master) Carlo Mazzone-Clementi at LATC (Los Angeles Theater Center) and also performed there in Julius Caesar and Mid Summer’s Night’s Dream, directed by LATC resident director, Mr. Ed Cambridge! Hassan is also a percussionist who currently is a guest performer in Los Angeles with the Steve McGill Project, Ayo’s Drums of Wisdom, and internationally known Performance Artist Joe Lewis! Hassan studied theater at  West Los Angeles College. He also studied film and television at Los Angeles City College.