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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. The al-Hamlet Summit sees the
familiar characters of Hamlet reborn as delegates placed in a
conference room in an unnamed modern Arab state on the brink of
war; Richard III: an Arab Tragedy is a contemporary adaptation of
Shakespeare's classic, reworked and transplanted into the scorching
oil-rich Islamic world of the Gulf; while The Speaker's Progress is
a forensic reconstruction of Twelfth Night which transforms into an
unequivocal act of defiance towards the state, forming a dark
satire on the decades of hopelessness and political inertia that
fed twenty-first-century revolts across the Arab region.The Arab
Shakespeare Trilogy features an editorial introduction and
annotation by Graham Holderness, positioning the plays within the
contexts of both modern Shakespearean drama and Arab culture as
well as an author's preface by Sulayman Al Bassam, detailing the
plays' history of theatrical reception and outlining his philosophy
of Shakespeare adaptation.
"New writing based on the 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, wit, and radical reformer. The production
locates Ibn Al-Muqaffa's work in its original historical context -
Iraq circa 750 AD and the dawn of the Abbasid revolution - one of
the most turbulent moments in Islamic history, and an age with all
too many parallels to our own. The Mirror for Princes opened at the
Barbican in May 2006, in a production by Sulayman Al-Bassam
Theatre."
The room is set up like a conference hall somewhere in the Arab
world, or perhaps like the legislative assembly of a small modern
state. There are desks with push-button microphones and headsets.
Behind, there is a screen, as if someone planned to give a
Powerpoint presentation. But the names on the desks are the
familiar characters from "Hamlet". The setting of Sulayman Al
Bassam's powerful, disturbing version of the "Hamlet" story is a
modern Middle-Eastern state whose old king has just died, to be
replaced by his brother, a ruthless, westernised dictator who has
married the old king's wife to legitimise his rule, and calls his
regime a "new democracy".
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UR (Paperback)
Sulayman Al-Bassam
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R380
Discovery Miles 3 800
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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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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