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!
Hassan studied with Ed Cambridge and (Commedia dell’arte master) Carlo Mazzone-Clementi at Los Angeles Theater Center, and also performed there, in Julius Caesar and Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, directed by LATC resident director, Mr Ed Cambridge. Hassan's play, “Dark Comedy," about a fictional meeting between Paul Robeson and Lincoln Perry, better known as Stepin Fetchit, was featured at the First Annual NESONA Short Play Festival in Los Angeles in 2017. His play "Temptation," was runner up in Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Centers, Ira Aldridge Playwrights Competition.
His film “The Poets,” which was made in the middle 1990s, provides 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 at Beyond Baroque Literary Art Center in Venice Beach, California. A copy of “The Poets” documentary was also included in Los Angeles publisher, editor, poet and actor S.A. Griffin's archive at UCLA.
Hassan was also a cast member of the groundbreaking theater production, “The Lower Depths,” where he played The Baron, that premiered in Los Angeles in 1990, 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.
The Maxim Gorky play was updated, by the brilliant San Francisco director Michael McGee, from 1900 Moscow to late 1980s Skid Row Los Angeles. Hassan has collaborated with Tony winner Mark Stewart of Passing Strange - with Theresa Larkin PhD, Enemy Of The People (reading) - with Lynn Manning, Watts Village Theater Company - with Lewis Adams PhD, Edinboro Fringe Festival and with Lance Williams PhD.
Hassan's a graduate of West Los Angeles College Theater Dept, and also studied film and television at Los Angeles City College. He's DJ'd (STRAIGHT AHEAD) a jazz/world music program for ten years on LA independent radio Killradio.org (LA flagship station for IndyMedia). Hassan also did the weekday evening news at Killradio where he did interviews with Dr.Cornel West, Prof/Activist - Lalo Schifrin, composer - George Clinton of Funkadelic - Kamasi Washington, band leader - Mike Watt, The Minutemen- Ron Kovic, activist, subject of Oliver Stone's film, Born On The Fourth of July.