Kuwaiti playwright Al-Bassam kicks off world premiere of 'Petrol Station'

By Aaron Kassraie WASHINGTON, March 25 (KUNA) -- Kuwaiti playwright Sulayman Al-Bassam will return to the Kennedy Center stage in Washington on March 24 to 27 for the world premiere of the first work to his newest trilogy, "Petrol Station." The story takes place at a remote petrol station on the border of an unnamed country in the Gulf.
"It's a modern dystopian story which addresses the problems of human identity, borders, loyalty, betrayal, love, ambition and the struggle for power in a civil war-torn country where the currency of exchange is smuggled petrol and fleeing refugees," Al-Bassam told KUNA.
"Petrol Station is the tragic backdrop to a familial standoff where the crimes and secrets of one generation make violent claims on the lives of the next," he added.
The cast consists of only American actors who portray widely diverse characters ranging from migrant workers to greedy warlords.
"With various travel bans being imposed by the US I was faced with the fact that my usual troupe of pan-Arab actors probably couldn't perform in the United States at this time," Al-Bassam explained. "So we are using an all-American cast to present a cross-cultural drama." Al-Bassam's time as an artist in residence at New York University is what he says allowed him to develop an "American voice to tell an Arab story" in which he deliberately choose to write the story in English.
"Choices around casting; African American and Spanish speakers, and the way the story might carry echoes of other stories and moments from American or Western politics will resonate with US audiences where it is no longer 'happening somewhere else' but on their own doorstep," he said.
Al-Bassam was inspired to write Petrol Station after finding interest in the "periodic violence of the human experience.
"I first started writing it in 2003 at the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq where scenes reminded me of the burning oil fields in Kuwait from the withdrawing Iraqi army twelve years earlier," he said. "Petrol Station is a shift in the form of spatial and temporal space where events in the play intersect with current and modern day events." Al-Bassam's previous work includes his five part Arab Shakespeare Trilogy in which the second work, Richard III: An Arab Tragedy, was also presented at the Kennedy Center.
He said he hopes to offer performances of Petrol Station to Kuwaiti and Arab audiences soon. (end) ak