Sulayman Al Bassam’s latest play UR is inspired by the ancient Sumerian tablet, The Lamentation for the Destruction of the City of Ur: a historical tablet that laments the destruction of the world’s oldest city.

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.