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Sulayman Al-Bassam's
"The Al-Hamlet Summit" has been awarded the following international
prizes since its premier in August 2002:
Fringe First Award for innovation in writing and
directing (Edinburgh Festival, '02)
Best Performance Award, Cairo International Festival
of Experimental Theatre, '02.
Best Director Award, Cairo International Festival
of Experimental Theatre, '02.
link to photo of Cairo awards ceremony 
Director's Note:
Hamlet
as an expression of politics…
This has been the driving force behind this work as it moved through
its various stages of development that began in January 2001. The following
text is a cross-cultural piece of writing in which I have tried to capture
a sense of geographical context and contemporary resonance.
As performed by my London-based theatre company, Zaoum Theatre, it aims
to allow English-speaking audiences a richer understanding of the Arab
world and its people, and how their fates are inextricably linked to
that of the West's.
I
have endeavoured to avoid the polemic; favouring a concrete and poetic
formulation of an Arab viewpoint.
The style of writing combines aspects of the Arab oral poetry tradition
with the rhetoric of modern-day politics.
In directing the piece, I sought to bring out a precise and grotesque
hyperrealism in the work. The conference chamber that gradually slides
into a war room directly illuminates the political setting of the piece.
It is a huis-clos that parodies the so-called 'transparency' of today's
political processes and it is a deadly arena of internal conflict.
It is not a piece about any specific country in the Arab world.
Rather, it presents a composite of many Arab concerns that affect peoples
from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic and beyond…
Sulayman Al-Bassam
Writer-Director Kuwait, September, 2002.