What would you do if one day you woke up and you were Kanye West? To most people it’s a ludicrous question, others may have given it more thought, but it sits at the heart of a new play written by rising playwright Sam Steiner.

Kanye the First imagines a scenario where the superstar rapper dies and returns to the world in the body of a 27-year-old, middle-class British woman called Annie. Confusion reigns for Annie, her family and the world at large, but she eventually comes to take advantage of the persona thrust upon her.

The idea began as a wildcard pitch to new writing company HighTide, who will debut the play as part of their festival in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and Walthamstow, London, this month. Steiner, whose play Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons has been a hit at the Edinburgh fringe for three years running, is keen to emphasise that Kanye the First is not about caricaturing the rapper. He had been struck by the “empathy gap” that was revealed last year when West was hospitalised for exhaustion and spent time in a psychiatric centre.

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“I became really frustrated with how people were mocking him, and implying that he deserved this in some way,” said Steiner. “To me it showed this growing empathy gap that people have when it comes to Kanye West; friends of mine who had struggled with mental health problems and know what it’s like to go through a hard time felt totally fine about taking the piss out of Kanye for it. I thought it was coloured by racism to some extent, but I became really interested in why people responded to him in that way.”

Yet this is not a play about Kanye, this is a play about Annie, who is struggling with an ill mother, a detached sister, an absent father and a general difficulty in connecting to the world. By examining the rapper through the prism of her ordinary, relatable life, Steiner said he wanted to make people think twice about the way society treats, and also shapes, celebrities such as West.

“So much of Kanye’s current identity has been formed by the things we the public put on him,” said Steiner. “And that scared me a little bit, that we’ve done this to this person to some extent, we’ve created this public monster. He’s been treated quite cruelly and he’s responded to that.”

As a longtime fan of Kanye West, particularly the way he “makes the personal epic”, Steiner was also drawn to exploring what makes the cult of Kanye such a global fascination, where he is no longer viewed as a human with flaws but simply an “android celebrity monster”.

“I think he has this really interesting dichotomy between bravado and desperation,” said Steiner. “I think he has this confidence which is rooted in self-consciousness, which I really relate to and I think a lot of people relate to, yet we almost refuse to attribute that humanness to him because it’s played out on a bigger scale.”

‘Kanye makes the personal epic’ … Sam Steiner.

He added: “A lot of the journey of the play is Annie using this mask of Kanye West’s identity to open up and allow herself to be vulnerable and say what she wants to say.”

The play is subtly littered with West song lyrics, and verbatim passages from interviews such as his infamous encounters with Zane Lowe in 2013 and 2015. Kim Kardashian “may or may not” also make an appearance in the play, and Steiner admitted that grappling with the complexities of West had given him some sleepless nights.

“I had this moment a week before the first draft where I remember going, ‘this man is too complex for a play’. But I think fundamentally he is trying to be himself and trying to express himself, which people relate to. And he’s unpredictable, in the same way that Bowie was unpredictable, and that’s rare and exciting.”

Steiner said he felt a lot of the issues people had with West and his statements about himself and his work were rooted in race, and the play explores the often problematic cultural appropriation rife in the way that the work of black artists is often treated and consumed.

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Steiner observed that it can be a minefield to discuss, but said that was no reason to shy away from it in the play. “It’s difficult because I believe in multiculturalism, that art and music is a way of sharing cultures and experiences and is all about empathy,” said Steiner. “But then I’ve been to concerts where I’ve been in a 90% white audience and half of the crowd have chanted along with the N-word, which is really problematic. And during the play rehearsals we were discussing the issue of white women at Solange concerts singing along with the lyrics ‘don’t touch my hair’, without any real sense of how politicised hair is for black women.”

While it may grapple with Messiah-complex issues, and indeed the second coming of Kanye, Steiner said the play is rooted in a very simple human story, showing how even the biggest egos on this planet are not without their vulnerable sides.

“I think hopefully the play shows how, even though Annie is a completely separate entity, there are a lot of shared experiences between a 27-year-old woman in this country and being Kanye West,” he said. “That when it comes to grief or shame or confidence issues or feeling like an outsider, no one is exempt.”