Ukraine 1929. As Stalin launches the first of his Five-Year Plans, a closeknit rural community stands unwittingly in the path of his drive to create a thriving socialist Soviet Union. The outcome is catastrophic. What begins for the people of the village as an amusingly alien concept rapidly becomes an unstoppable force for change. Robbed first of their land, then their religion and independence, the whole country soon becomes engulfed by a tragedy that will scar a nation for generations. Natal'ya Vorozhbit's play The Grain Store was first staged in this English translation by Sasha Dugdale by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2009.