JustArts sat down with Ahmed Abdel Kouddous '13 to talk about his most recent acting endeavor and his future in theater.

JustArts: This Winter, you'll be in In The Heart of America by Naomi Wallace. What can you tell us about the play and Janet Morrison's production?

Ahmed Abdel Kouddous: Well, In The Heart of America is a play about identity, a play about guilt. It is a play in which the past and the present and the future are all entangled. There's absolutely no props at all. You're wearing costumes and you have your guns but you don't have tables or chairs or all that. Janet is a wonderful professor. I've known her for a long, long time. She's amazing. She's always there for her students outside of class. She will make the Earth rotate the opposite direction to make it work for you.

JA: Aside from what we just discussed, to what can we look forward in In The Heart of America? What enticed you to act in this particular play?

AAK: I guess an audience could look forward to seeing a side of war that you wouldn't otherwise see in the news. The beauty of this production is that the audience will find themselves in a completely different world. One that is psychological and one that I hope will allow the audience to feel the burden of guilt and other stuff that each character carries.

JA: Seeing that your major is politics, and theater is only your minor, how did you become so interested in constantly acting?

AAK: I've been doing acting and theater since I was a kid, but I've only really pursued it [since] my senior year of high school. My grandmother was a pretty big actress in the Middle East. My grandfather was a playwright, a screenwriter and a novelist, so I've always been surrounded by it. It's something I really enjoy doing. It's not necessarily something that I want to pursue as a career, but I'll definitely grab any opportunities that arise, acting-wise.

JA: Who is your role model in the theater industry?

AAK: Let's see. [Pause] John Malkovich.

JA: Why?

AAK: Because he's crazy. [Laughs and pauses] I don't really have a role model but I'd say my grandmother. She was an actress in Egypt. She was the one who always pushed me to pursue it, even if it was just for a small part of my life. I guess she wants me to taste a little bit of what she tasted in her life. So John Malkovich and my grandmother.

JA: Recently you starred in a stripped-down, small cast production of The Glass Menagerie. How was working with director Paula Plum in such an intimate performance different from your other experiences in the field? How does this play differ from other plays in which you've been involved?

AAK: Paula Plum identifies herself as an actress. So we got heavy, heavy technical acting notes, and I loved that. She really focuses on your body and the way you speak and what you're thinking and the history of your character and what they were like in the twenties [which is when The Glass Menagerie takes place].

She was full of energy, energy, energy. Every single rehearsal was an explosion. She's a very bright human being: she's full of energy and she's absolutely incredible. The Glass Menagerie is a classical American play, while In The Heart of America isn't classical at all. It's surreal, it's confusing. Acting in it is a bit confusing because you're not working with a physical environment. Everything is mental, emotional and spiritual.

Janet Morrison is really, really good at allowing you to understand the spirit, the emotion of the play. And it's very, very sad. Both The Glass Menagerie and In The Heart of America are extremely depressing plays.

JA: But I feel that in depressing plays, there's more ability to relate to and feel for the character if heavy things are happening to them.

AAK: Yeah, exactly. I guess most artists are all depressing. Tennessee Williams [who wrote Glass Menagerie] is...he's my role model. Tennessee Williams, John Malkovich and my Grandmother.

JA: When you graduate this spring do you see yourself working in the theater industry in the future?

AAK: Well, I'm going to be prospectively attending the National Theater Institute in Connecticut. It's an acting conservatory. It's 7 days of week of just acting, 12 hours a day. It's intense.

And then I hope to work, throughout my life, with film or theater production. Maybe acting, maybe producing. But I do like making money, so I'll have to give and take when it comes to acting. You have to know how to make connections. Business is business.

JA: And on the toes of the last question, as a second semester senior, do you have any reflections about the past four years about Brandeis both academically and artistically?

AAK: I'm very happy to have pursued both politics and theater. Ideally I'd just be doing theater. But, I do have an interest in politics that I can't just ignore. And unfortunately, you can't devote 100% of your brain to both of them. You have to give priority to one of them over the other.

I really do enjoy politics and I wish I could devote hours and hours a day reading whatever readings they assign me but at the same time I also would rather be, you know, playing around with theater, with acting.

I also wish I had done more student productions. Maybe I could find a way in the future to mix both politics and theater. Coming from Egypt, it's very easy to do that.

JA: I mean, you have to be a good actor if you're going to be a good politician.

AAK: I don't want to be a politician. I'd work for an analyst company. It's a very fun industry. You study the politics of a country and you come up with basically diaries and journals of what's going on in a given country or society and you give that to your clients. Whether it's an investment company or, I don't know, a construction company wants to know what's up.

You're not hurting anyone. I mean, you have to pick and choose who you work for. But I definitely do see myself working with production, probably film. Unfortunately, film is a new media. The masses, the physical mass, likes to go to sports and concerts. You'll never get thousands and thousands and thousands of people going to a theater. You get millions of people seeing one film in a weekend.

But the masses, where do hundreds of thousands of people gather at once? A football game. And there's a certain beauty to that as well. I hope that maybe one day, theater can be like that. Actors and producers and directors tend to forget about their audience. The audience is the most important thing. You're trying to tell a story.
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