Petrol Station

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Reviews

Few works catch the various currents within Arabism and Islam such as Al Bassam * The Financial Times *
Like plays by Beckett or Stoppard, Petrol Station tells its story of violence and near-apocalyptic destruction with a comic and ironic flare. * Professor Susanne Wofford *
Al Bassams work shows that even in the middle of totalitarianism, art can carve out space to dissent. * The New York Times *

Author Bio

Sulayman Al-Bassam, is a Kuwaiti playwright and theatre director, and founder of Zaoum theatre company (London 1996-2001) and its Arabic arm Sulayman Al-Bassam Theatre Kuwait (2002).