First Published in 2000. The Simpleton, which was written in 1968 and could not be performed for political reasons, saw the light of day only in 1994. Its complex games of power and identity, played out among a group of actors, remain entirely contemporary today. Set in a theatre, The Simpleton, in the age-old tradition of Russian drama, tackles the timeless problems of personal freedom and inner independence. It is anything but a simple play with its complicated chameleon-like nature new levels of reality continually moving in to push their predecessors out of the way. The mystification begins at the outset with the future arsonist, the Fop, prowling through the gall grumbling about the presence of spectators... The Simpleton is unlike anything else that was being written in the Soviet Union at the time and aside from its searing thematic content, it is astonishingly inventive in its theatricality.

    Part 1 The Simpleton; Chapter 1 Act I; Chapter 2 Act II; Chapter 3 Act III;

    Biography

    Sergei Kokovkin is the author of more than twelve screenplays, nine dramatizations and fourteen plays, of which The Simpleton was his first. After early thirty years as an actor in Leningrad and Moscow, Kokovkin retired from the stage in 1992 to devote himself to writing and directing. John Freedman is the theatre critic of the Moscow Times and the co-editor of Harwood Academic Publishers' Russian Theatre Archive and the forthcoming Russian Film Archive.