When Akira Shirai first read the script for "Ballyturk," he quickly understood why its creator, Irish playwright Enda Walsh, said the work "should bypass the intellect and go straight into your bones."
The 60-year-old artistic director at Kanagawa Arts Theatre in Yokohama was mulling over what to stage next and he says the hilariously absurd piece, with its three-person cast of characters named One, Two and Three, left him somewhat dumbfounded.
"I said as much to the translator, Chizuko Komiyama, who then told me she didn't get it either," the director says with a laugh. "Yet somehow it just stuck with me, so I chose it without having to think twice."