Peter Goesnner was born in Leipzig, in the former communist East Germany, in 1962. His dream was to be a great football player, but 40 years later, the witty, easy-going German is in Tokyo directing "Sekishoku Elegy" ("Red Elegy") by absurdist playwright Minoru Betsuyaku. Staged in 1980 for only one run, "Red Elegy" is a strange, ironic minor masterpiece about the aimless lives of former student activists — its hero passes one lazy day after another living off his girlfriend's wages.

To find out how a soccer-mad East German comes to be directing his own company of Japanese actors in Tokyo, I caught up with him at a rehearsal studio in Meguro where our conversation in Japanese was peppered with jokes.

Why did you come to Japan?