Hassan El-Amin is Martin Luther King Jr. in UD REP’s “The Mountaintop.” Courtesy of N. Howatt/REP
For an hour and a half nearly every day for a month, Hassan El-Amin is Martin Luther King at the University of Delaware.
He plays the Civil Rights leader on the last night of his life, right after he’s giving his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech and right before he walks out on the balcony of a Memphis motel and is shot to death on April 4, 1968.
It’s an honor, El-Amin says of starring in “The Mountaintop” through Sunday, Oct. 8. It’s challenging. It’s emotionally draining. And tiring. He and his co-star talk for nearly the entire 90 minutes.
It’s also the kind of role that El-Amin lives for.
The 62-year-old actor, who grew up in San Diego and earned an undergraduate degree from San Diego State, got his master’s degree in UD’s now-mothballed Professional Theater Training Program before working in regional theater around the country. He wanted to play classical theater roles, he says.
He came home to Newark last year to join the professional Resident Ensemble Players and since has played a variety of roles in “Gods of Carnage,” “Clybourne Park,” “The Bells,” “Elephant Man” and “Tartuffe,” As MLK in “The Mountaintop,” it’s the first time the show has hung on his shoulders.
Read more — delawareonline (The News Journal)