James Kenney, who became involved in local theater seven or eight years ago, was reading plays recently when he dove into a series of three related works by Martin McDonagh. The trio are all set near Galway, Ireland, where the playwright spent time early in his life. Two of the three, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" and "The Lonesome West," were nominated for Tony awards during their runs on Broadway.

It was the third, though, "A Skull in Connemara," that particularly struck Kenney.

"I thought, 'I'd love to do this play and play that part,'" he recalls. But he adds, "Nobody does this play, at least (not) in community theater."

So he decided to take the reins himself and try to get the show staged.

He nabbed a location, the Norwich Arts Center's Donald L. Oat Theater, where he had previously performed some of the plays and monologues he's written and where he directed "Good People" in 2014.

He pulled together a cast under the leadership of director Kato McNickle.

The production debuts on Friday and runs for two weekends.

Kenney says "A Skull in Connemara" reflects the kind of scripts he's drawn to — those that are a good combination of comedy and drama "that, maybe exaggeratedly, reflects real life. It's not all fun, and it's not all gloom and doom either."

It helped, too, that it is set in Western Ireland — one of his favorite places and where some of his forbearers came from.

"A Skull in Connemara," which played off-Broadway in 2001, is edgy and has brutal elements to it, he says. Beyond that, the language appeals to him — "not just the accent but the cadence and the sentence structure (which) is kind of counterintuitive when you speak American English."

And then there's the fact that it's simply a good story.

In "A Skull in Connemara" (which, McNickle says, is set in the late 1980s or early '90s, based on the pop-culture references in it), Mick Dowd lives in the small hamlet of Leenane near Galway. He was responsible for the auto accident that killed his wife; he was driving drunk. He went to prison for two years but is now out and, as Kenney says, "he's just trying to get through the day the best way he can."

He is hired to disinter the remains of people from a church cemetery to make space for the newly departed.

Here's the rub: One of the bodies he has to remove is that of his late wife.

Gossipmongers have long whispered that Mick actually killed his spouse before the car crash.

When Mick goes to disinter his wife, he finds a mysterious someone has already removed and slunk off with her remains.

Kenney says the characters aren't clear cut. They aren't heroes or villains but have multiple sides to their personalities. And most of them grow a little bit over the course of the story.

"The characters are very quirky," he adds. "They remind me a lot of some of my relatives, some of the qualities of my Irish aunts."

Kenney, who lives in Montville and works as an environmental inspector for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, says of acting, "I got a late start. I always wanted to do it, and I got involved in it probably seven, eight years ago."

He started at Mystic Seaport and "got the bug," he says. He went on to act with such groups as Flock Theatre and Granite Theatre and then wrote a couple of plays.

Working on "A Skull in Connemara," he says, "I'm kind of enjoying the producing part of it. I think next time, I'm going to pick one job, and I'll either produce or act."

When Kenney asked McNickle about directing "A Skull in Connemara," she read the play and found it such a surprising, interesting and strange piece that she decided to get together with Kenney to talk about the project.

She says that, as she got more into the script, "I started finding such humor and warmth in a weird, weird way. ... It starts turning these kind of strange or even grotesque and cruel actions, and it actually makes a comedy out of them that works."

McNickle adds, "It's just been a delight working with this particular company and the actors we pulled together and making it work. It's this passion project for James, but it has been infectious for everybody, I think."

It's probably not surprising that a show titled "A Skull in Connemara" needs some skulls.

Three skulls are destroyed every performance, so the group members had to figure out the best way to make all those skulls and how an actor can smash them onstage while keeping the audience and cast members safe. They contacted the Sandra Feinstein-GAMM Theatre in Pawtucket, R.I., which staged "A Skull in Connemara" earlier this year, and got advice. And Kenney did some YouTube research; he bought a skull model, made a silicone mold, and began creating skulls.

Discussing what audiences should expect when they see "A Skull in Connemara," Kenney says, "I want them to be open-minded. I want them to laugh, and I want them to be shocked, and I think if they come, they should be (he laughs). It's like nothing you'll see around in local theater."

"A Skull in Connemara," Donald Oat Theater, Norwich Arts Center, 60 Broadway, Norwich; opens Friday and runs through Oct. 30; 8 p.m. Fri. and Sat., 2 p.m. Sun.; all profits benefit Norwich Arts Center; $18, $16 for military, students and seniors, $15 for NAC members; (860) 887-2789, norwicharts.org.

More from McDonagh

Martin McDonagh wrote and directed the film "In Bruges."

In addition to "The Leenane Trilogy," he penned "The Aran Islands Trilogy," which features "The Cripple of Inishmaan," "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" and "The Banshees of Inisheer."

His brother, John Michael McDonagh, wrote and directed the movies "The Guard" and "Calvary."