An AUCian Tragedy: Theater Maverick El Lozy to Retire

A charismatic, confident and fearless thespian, Mahmoud El Lozy is seen as an inspiring figure not only by his students, but by his friends, colleagues, and those who have worked with him in Egyptian film theater.

But with each curtain fall, good things come to an end. After a lifetime of creating legacies on and off campus, El Lozy has decided to retire from AUC after 35 years of teaching.

“I’m retiring in 20 months,” he says, adding that he is happy to leave academia.

But in almost theatric prose, it was the fates which set him down the path that made this alum a maverick of the stage.

He was a student of English and Comparative Literature who was not involved with acting until a friend of his traded paying for his lunch with his participation in a play.

“One day I did not have a piaster on me, my friend offered that we have lunch together and I told her that I did not have any money. She told me not to worry and that lunch was on her,” said El Lozy.

She never wanted the money back, she only wanted to get me to act in the play, he explained.

And then the stage became an addiction, as he described it. He started acting in different plays at the university and that’s when his passion for acting emerged.

After graduation, his father urged him to work and El Lozy started working in an advertising agency.

“It was awful. I don’t know why people are so fascinated with advertising,” he said.

After doing everything within his power to get fired, he joined the Arab Organization for Industrialization. He also worked for the British Aerospace, where they were manufacturing anti-tank Swingfire missiles.

“It was a lot of fun, but I decided to resign when one day a missile misfired and landed 20 feet from a building,” he said.

It’s then that he decided to get back to theatre.

He received his PhD  in Dramatic Art at the University of California where he stayed for five years. He then got married during his second year.

“When I came back, I was horrified because it (Egypt) got even worse. It was horrible and everybody has become very conservative. It was basically terrifying. I had come back home, but I was an alien to the country and I still am one,” he added.

El Lozy started teaching at AUC in fall 1985, before a theater program was set in place. He held multiple jobs including, assistant director of the theater, a teacher in a rhetoric course, and later, a theater course.

In 1986, El Lozy introduced Arabic theater to AUC with Simma Awanta written by Nouaman Ashour.

“To me, he is the voice of Egypt and Egyptian theatre and film,” said John Hoey, theater professor at AUC.

Jillian Campana, another professor at the department says: “He is known internationally for his work in Egyptian theatre, both as a performer and a scholar and so I was excited to join the faculty and work alongside him.”

The acting addiction runs strong in the El-Lozy clan

“He is a very inspiring figure,” said his daughter actress Yosra El Lozy.

“I remember as a child I was taught manners and values that sadly don’t t fit with Egypt nowadays. Yet, my parents managed to engrave those manners inside us, which is something I realize as a  mother now,” she added.

When asked about her professional opinion on her father’s work, Yosra explained that there is usually a dilemma between actors and directors. However, she doesn’t think it affects her father.

“But with my father I feel that this dilemma does not exist since he is both a director and an actor, which is amazing,” she said.

Outside AUC,  El Lozy was involved in a theater company and was acting alongside a group of stars like Abla Kamel, Ahmed Kamal and Sayed Ragab.

“My first film was with Mohamed Khan and Mahmoud Hemida in 1989 and it is called Fares el Madina (City Knight),” said El Lozy.

He started writing plays in 1998. The main focus in most of his writings revolved around the issue of censorship.

“We had a stage reading of Mamnoo’ men el 3ard (Banned from Display)  at the Falaki [theater] at the time when there was a statewide curfew. I think it was 2013/14 or something like that, a lot of people attended and it went very well.”

El Lozy wrote three plays in English.

Bay the Moon, was banned by state security and couldn’t be played at AUC,  but the The Trilogy was shown at the Director’s Lab at the Lincoln Center in New York.

The third play, Us and Them was never published because of its spiritual content which made people uncomfortable.

However, he doesn’t mind writing without publishing.

“I don’t like to sort of dilute things just to make people happy. I don’t care if they are never published or never shown, I just wrote them to get them out of my system,” El Lozy explained.

“I don’t have ambitions, people who have ambitions are ready to make compromises and sell themselves. I don’t need that, I just want a peace of mind,” he added.

Students will be hit hard by El Lozy’s decision.

“Mahmoud El Lozy is both my teacher and friend, he has the ability to give you both academic and personal knowledge. He is a very passionate theatre practitioner, and he feeds you his passion until you grow your own,” said Sarah El Shazly, a theatre major.

“You can call him whenever for advice, for a chat, and he’s there,” she added.