Below is a Q&A with Genti Bejko, an Albanian-Canadian director, actor, and playwright.

Genti Bejko has been directing, acting, producing, and writing since 2002 for theatre, television, and film. He began his career in Albania before coming to Canada five years ago and joins this production as Ariel.

Q: I understand you’re a fan of McDonagh, the author of  The Pillowman.

Genti: I’ve directed two plays of his and translated three of them into Albanian. At 22, The Lieutenant of Inishmore was the first play I directed at the National Theatre in Albania. I am still the youngest director to ever have worked there. I have started translating The Pillowman as well. I’ve read a lot of his plays and made a study of him.

He is like the Quentin Tarantino of theatre. In fact, I think he is influenced by him. Though he was born and raised in London, he is Irish, and all his plays are about Ireland. I love Irish culture. Albanians and Irish people have a lot of similarities: we are hotblooded, we like drinking and fighting, the snake is a sacred symbol for us. Albanians like dark humour. The way families are, strong, traditional. And both peoples have suffered.
There is a historical connection as well: The Romans used Albanian mercenaries in Ireland; also the art: the mosaics in Ireland resemble Illyrian art. It’s a complex connection.

Q: How do you find your character, who is quite brutal?

Genti: When I first read the play, it seems Ariel seems very brutal, but when I started to dig more, I found that most of the time it’s a fake brutality. I think he is playing the bad cop. His background is not a simple one. He is very obsessed with kids, in the sense that he wants to protect them absolutely. I think that what he hates most are abusers and this gives him license to be more brutal. 

Q: This play is set in a prison in a totalitarian state. How do you find connections with the material?

Genti: I was a kid when Albania was communist. I remember a few things. These regimes can do whatever they want. If they thought you were guilty, you were guilty; if they want to kill someone, they do, but they also like to play around. And they also like to find out if what they think happened was true. 

My father a chief inspector in Albania, a lawyer as well. Also two of my uncles were officers and some of my family was in the army. I chose a totally different direction! 

But we were brought up to be as upright as possible. We were taught to be direct and  honest, to “be a man!” Maybe now that sounds a little outdated, but we were taught to stand for our principles – to be a man for your family, for the weakest. To serve and protect. When you see an injustice, you correct it.

But McDonagh has created a fictional regime. My father in his entire career in Albania investigated just one murder because people were very afraid of breaking the law. The law was so severe people were much better behaved. The stories of Katurian would never have been permitted or published in the first place. All the media are under the control of the government. Finally, in Albania particularly, but usually in these regimes, the population is very homogeneous, so you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a Jewish citizen and another citizen. However, in the play, the names are very mixed ethnicities: Tupolsky, slavic; Katurian, Armenian; Ariel, totally different again. McDonagh was really using this “regime” more like a device to tell a story that could not happen in an ordinary democracy.