AUCian Raw Talent Emerges on Stage

By: Lilian Gamal 

@LillianGamal

A growing number of students are taking acting classes, with some choosing to minor in theater as a gateway to auditioning for small scale productions. 

The freedom of performance art and the sense they are no longer confined by major attracts students from different disciplines to delve into acting. 

“People are driven by curiosity. Acting is a matter of experiencing the human condition. Performing a character is a social and psychological study, an anthropology of the human heart,” Jillian Campana, professor of theater and director of the play Noura, said.

Campana adds that the accessibility of classes encourages more students to approach the stage and allows their emotions to be at the forefront. 

She believes that a theater class sharpens the necessary skills for a dimensional character. It is normal at first for beginners to fall through the cracks.

A performance can rattle with a student’s comfort levels at first, which only pushes them to become center stage with grace, she added.

Psychology senior Nadine Abdel Razek, who plays the protagonist Noura says this has been the most challenging role she ever had to play. The cast is comprised of students from various fields, minoring in theater. 

Noura is about a woman in her mid-forties from a Christian Iraqi family that fled the war-torn country and settled in New York. 

“ I really need to push myself past my limits…to do this character and her story justice,” Abdel Razek said.

Before the lead role in Noura, she performed in student-directed scenes and directed two scenes of her own. 

“We’re introduced to the environment of the theater world but on a smaller, less intimidating scale, which is a great place to start,” Abdel Razek said.

Noura assistant director Hisham Abdel Razek (no relation), says acting classes are bound by talent, not by major, which is why more students became inclined toward approaching theater and experimenting with acting at the Performing and Visual Arts (PVA) unit.

Hisham Abdel Razek, a Mechanical Engineering alumnus and the teaching assistant for the courses Theater in the Making and Acting I, was involved in theater for four years at AUC, participated in six plays and performed in 19 student-directed scenes. 

“I always tell people to audition, even if they do not get cast. It doesn’t matter. Auditions are like going on a job interview. You grow from it as a person,” Hisham Abdel Razek added.

He pointed out that the majority of students who became active members of the theater community, first started out through directing-scene classes which required students to direct 15-minute scenes from plays of their choice. 

Students in turn, helped in spreading the word about these acting courses. 

“Someone who’s doing theater for the first time, would invite 20 of their friends who spent their time at the plaza, HUSS, or the food court … they would come to watch their friends acting, comfortably in their element, and would get inspired to do the same,” Hisham Abdel Razek said.

Many students on campus describe acting as therapeutic and an outlet for complex emotions. To them, theater became a medium of expressing non-verbal sentiments, even to first-timers venturing into acting.

But the challenge now is to get more people interested enough to explore theater at AUC and what it envelops of raw talents.