If Only the Dead Could Listen (Globic Press, 2008), by Gëzim Alpion, is a play about the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees in Britain.

[2] The events of the play take place at a police station in a small town near London, UK, in December 2001.

Scene One: Bill Wright, a police sergeant in his late forties, is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Alma Stone, an Albanian researcher in London.

She has volunteered to act as an interpreter at the interview of Leka Trimi, an Albanian asylum seeker from Kosova, who has been arrested on suspicion of theft.

The conversation between Bill and Alma reveals that she suffers from an inferiority complex because of the bad press her country and expatriates receive in the British media.

Scene Two: John, a custody officer, orders Leka repeatedly to sit down when Bill and Alma enter the interview room.

Leka’s self-esteem and his opinion of his fellow Albanians are apparently so low that he cannot comprehend that some of his compatriots in the UK are not refugees.

When Alma insists to know more and urges Leka to be patient because he will soon be reunited with his wife and son he tells her that they are both dead.

[3] Directed by Serbian-born dramaturg Duška Radosavljević, Vouchers received a rehearsed reading at the Festival of Contemporary European Plays in Huddersfield, UK, in March 2002, with English academic Dr. Steve Nicholson cast as the character of Dr Agim Kodra, and Jordanian actor Mohammed Aljarrah playing the role of Leka Trimi.

Following the success of the British première, Alpion and Dreamscape received invitations from the National Theatres of Albania, Kosova and Macedonia, all offering their resources for the show to be staged in their countries.

[4] A Birmingham Mail article describes If Only the Dead Could Listen as a "gritty play ... challenging perceptions about Albanian asylum seekers".

[9] The American edition includes an introduction by Professor Adrian Blackledge, Birmingham Poet Laureate 2014-15.