Publisher: Methuen Bloomsbury, 2012

“Sulayman Al Bassam is one of the world's leading contemporary dramatists. His adaptations of Shakespeare, performed around the world, have won many awards and met with widespread acclaim on four continents.

This volume brings together for the first time three of Al Bassam's adaptations of Shakespearean plays - including versions of Hamlet, Richard III and Twelfth Night - collectively known as The Arab Shakespeare Trilogy.”

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(Publisher: Oberon Modern Drama, 2018)

In Ancient Sumeria, a woman's desire for sexual sovereignty and radical vision of civic plurality draws the anger and outrage of the male status quo and unleashes catastrophe onto her city and her body.

The seminal Lamentation for the Destruction of the City of Ur is the first poem written for a civic entity -- a city -- in the history of mankind. Writing scenes across multiple timelines that stretch from 2000 BC, to the European Imperialist fantasies of the late 19th Century, to the ISIS destruction of Palmyra in 2015, to a distorted Utopian vision of the future, Al Bassam's play is a riot of imagination and poetic archaeology, exploring themes of iconoclasm, civic space and feminine apotheosis.

UR evokes the utopia and destruction of one of humanity's oldest cities, and is played by an ensemble composed of four Arabic actors working alongside four members of the Residenztheater ensemble.

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(Publisher: Oberon Modern Drama, 2017)

A desert. A border. A remote petrol station within earshot of civil war. This vividly imagined twilit zone provides the background for a familial standoff in which the crimes, secrets, and broken loves of one generation make violent claims on the lives of the next as two half-brothers vie for favours and allegiance from their aging father.

Examining themes of identity, ambition, and betrayal, this compelling drama from acclaimed Kuwaiti writer/director Sulayman Al Bassam uses the iconic setting of the deserted petrol station as a poetic space to explore the oppressions and aspirations of the Gulf Arab Region.

Al Bassam, a New York University Artist-in-Residence, returns following his highly regarded presentation of Richard III: An Arab Tragedy during the Kennedy Center international festival, Arabesque, in 2009. His provocative new story draws inspiration from Sumerian myth, Palestinian refugee literature, and American 1950s urban legends of the gas station to portray a modern dystopia where defunct ideologies, desperate migrants, zealous warlords, and opportunistic traffickers vie for supremacy.

Read Petrol Station

(Publisher: Oberon Modern Drama, 2007)

Written as a parable of the American Invasion of Iraq, the play takes its inspiration from the ancient fables Kalila wa Dimna, one of the masterpieces of Eastern culture.

Intended originally as a book of Council for Kings, literally, a 'mirror' for princes, these subtle and philosophical animal fables carry immense significance to all sections of Arab and Persian society, to this day. From India, via Persia, the tales reached the Arab world through the pen of Ibn Al-Muqaffa, court scribe, prose innovator and radical reformer.

The events unfold inside the court of a fledgling Abbasid Empire, circa 9th century AD. With the precision of a Persian miniature, the world created by Al Bassam teems with poets, advisors, assassins, lovers and princes. Chanelled with the urgency of a political thriller, the play charts a scathing exploration of contemporary sectarianism; modern violence and the perilous limits of free speech.

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Written in response to the collective uprisings in the Middle East that began in 2012, the monologues that shape In The Eruptive Mode give voice to six women at a tipping point in their journeys, in contradiction with themselves, in the moment where they are about to become other than what they were. Gnawed with irrational desire, haunted by former selves, these are individuals locked within interior landscapes as complex and disturbed as the exterior political worlds they inhabit. Caught short by the charge of history, either as observers, victims of circumstance, small-scale opportunists or desperate outsiders: they are the collateral characters in the convulsions of change.

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A voice berates an artist for their silence. The tone is violent, penetrating and unforgiving. As the monologue progresses, we are led to re-consider who owns silence and who owns speech; what is the definition of action and resistance? Written in the aftermath of the explosion of the Beirut Port, in August 2020, MUTE will enter research and development in 2022/23.

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This text was published by Mediapart, in French on 16-10-2024.

It is an open letter to colleagues in Western theatres and cultural institutions urging them to take a stand against the genocide of the Palestinians and the Israeli government's ongoing attacks on innocent civilians in the Arab world. The unprecedented urgency of the massacre of our peoples calls for a coordinated response and international solidarity.

It is a (factual) post-script to our current touring production “MUTE”.

This text was published by Mediapart, in French on 04-11-2024.

It is a second open letter to colleagues in Western theatres and cultural institutions.