Tony Award winner Ali Louis Bourzgui looks for the humanity in his art, on and off stage

For sinking his fangs into a vampiric role made famous by Kiefer Sutherland on screen, the actor earned both his first Tony nomination and first win.

Ali Louis Bourzgui is luring theatre fans into his vampiric thrall. He netted his first Tony win for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for playing David, the role once played by Kiefer Sutherland in the 1987 Joel Schumacher-directed movie adapted into the musical.

“You have this sci-fi vampire character that, on paper, could just be a villain,” Bourzgui said at a press conference after his win. Indeed, his David is the villain, the toxic influence of The Lost Boys who tricks mortal teen Michael into drinking blood to transform him into a vampire. And yet, Bourzgui carves out humanity and melancholy in David, who sees Michael as a mirror to his own pain.

"Whenever I go about a character, I always want to find both the human that exists inside the character and then find where my humanity fits into that as well.” Before, Bourzgui exercised this magnetism when he earned acclaim for his star-making Broadway role as Tommy, a character imprisoned in a different form of stasis, in The Who's Tommy revival in 2023. He's also starred as an activist as part of a scrappy collective in 2024's We Live in Cairo and Orpheus in Hadestown.

In his acceptance speech, Bourzgui discussed the metaphor of vampires: “Sometimes humanity needs a fantastical lens outside of ourselves to look at and explore questions about our own nature. Vampires represent those who have shunned their own humanity in order to achieve a nonexistent sense of superiority.” He called out the proverbial blood-suckers in the real-world: “The billionaires will never find happiness from their money. The colonizers will never find fulfillment from the land and lives they steal. The fascists will never find meaning from their conformity, not in this lifetime or eternity.”

"This [award] is dedicated to the beautiful tapestry of immigrant families who make this country really special. May you one day not have to audition for the empathy that should be freely given by this country that benefits from your beauty, for the queer and trans communities who have and always will exist, no matter what people in power try to take away from them," Bourzgui said.

A Muslim by a Moroccan-American father, he gave much love to the Arab community. "For Arab theatermakers and artists, may we continue to tell our stories and show our faces, so our humanity becomes undeniable, and our families can no longer be written off as merely collateral damage. May they know the beauty of our kisses upon each cheek and the romance of a language rooted in passion for love and life itself," he said.

He challenged the theatre industry with this question at the press conference: “Who are we to tell stories if we're not going to tell everybody's story, if we're not going to focus on the stories of people who are in current dire situations?” In contrast to the corrosive vampire he embodies on stage, Bourzgui is meaningfully inquiring who needs help and who gets it in the non-fantasy world we live in.

Get The Lost Boys tickets now.

Photo credit: Ali Louis Bourzgui in The Lost Boys on Broadway. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)