I am Joseph Stalin

This was my first play. It was inspired by a news in brief story I read in the Guardian; as
part of Glasnost, various previously-secret stories of the USSR were revealed and the one that caught my eye concerned Stalin's double. In the 1930s, perhaps fearing assassination, Stalin felt he needed a double, so a potato farmer from Georgia was kidnapped, operated on surgically to complete the likeness and then he stood in for Stalin at various meetings.

I thought this would be a good subject for a monologue - the first person not being the real first person etc.

It's an okay bit of writing, I think, though it's hugely overwritten. It was first performed in Berlin (in English) and it lasted almost two hours (here’s an image of the programme). When Michael Kingsbury directed it at the White Bear he cut around half of it (without asking me, I should add, though it's a good thing he did) and it lasted around 75 minutes. The play won a special prize at the Mobil Playwriting Awards (a sort of forerunner of the Bruntwood) and it sort of set me going on my playwriting career.

It's not a play I'd want to see revived, really, but there are a couple of nice bits of writing in it. Two excerpts below:

First excerpt:
'Joe' is allowed to visit his family one last time after the operation.

Second excerpt:
After an earlier incident when he used his likeness to leave the Kremlin and get drunk, a small silver star has been added to his tunic so insiders know he's the double. For a while he is in disgrace but when the Yalta Peace Talks come up and Stalin himself is too ill to attend and our hero is told to stand in for Stalin at the negotiations.