One morning I was reading the endless newspaper accounts of bombings and massacres of civilians for absurd ethnic or racial differences -- all happening very close to the tranquil and prosperous Italian coast. But then one small article caught my attention and bewildered me: in a half-destroyed theatre in Sarajevo rehearsals of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot were proceeding amidst the rain of bombs. I still remember clearly the question that filled my mind in the face of that article: Why, in a country that needed food, clothing and someone who could stop the slaughter; why did a theatre company continue to work on mounting a text like that of Beckett, which had no connection to the barbarities going on all around. The answer came like a stroke of lightning: I suddenly saw the two protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon, dressed in once-elegant clothes; I saw them full of hope waiting for that Godot who perhaps would never arrive. And behind them I saw another image superimposed: thousands of persons in refugee camps, families trembling in their houses for fear of being deported, entire towns in terrified apprehension, waiting for the moment when someone would arrive to end that madness.

And I began to understand: that strange Irish text had now become a cry to the world, had become the voice of a people, reflecting with pitiless clarity the emo-tional state of millions of persons. In the midst of the bombs and bullets, the theatrical ritual had been transformed into the determination not to accept passively a destiny of death and destruction. Shortly afterward I decided to enter the National Theatre School in Rome. I had understood that context is everything, that a Shakespeare play can be either a useless historical reconstruction or a ringing accusa-tion; vain intellectual posturing or a lucid map of human geography. From that moment I carry within me a word that serves me in my profession of actor and teacher as the compass that gives direction and sense to my work: Necessity.

I still believe that the need for theatre is comparable to the need for our parents: we only realize how much we need them and miss them when they are no longer with us. In the same way when freedom of artistic expression is repressed and strangled, when an earth-quake, a famine or the daily misery in which the vast majority of the world lives, reduce and limit life's possibilities; only then do we realize that to survive we humans need food for the soul as well as food for the body. Theatre is like a loaf of bread, always ready and needing only an actor and an audience to be able to satisfy the fundamental hunger of the spirit.

Cocks crowing, dogs barking and neighbor goats bleating woke me at 5:00 in the morning. And what do I do at 5:00 a.m.? My appointment with padre Jack was for 10:00, it was Sunday and I had no idea what to do at that hour of the morning. Luckily my housemates began to arise one by one and we talked about the activies of each of them. In spite of my timid and insecure Spanish, I began to feel at home; it seemed that I was the only person who found it strange that a theatre worker be part of this context.

When Jack arrived I was again struck by the singular presence of this man so different from the image of priests in my country. In place of the classic black habit, Jack wore jeans and a striped t-shirt, long white hair in a pony-tail; and he is a priest who smokes. With an open smile he invited me to get into the pickup and go with him to Paujiles, a new barrio constructed for the families who lost their homes in Hurricane Mitch, where teatro la fragua is constructing a second theatre. We were accompanied on the short trip by Karol, a beautiful little girl whom Jack calls his princess, and who (I discover later) is one of the daughters of Chito, one of the veteran actors of la fragua

When we arrived at Paujiles my gaze wandered over the recently constructed houses, the improvised outlines of streets, and I realized that basic services of water and sewage and electricity were still lacking: here life is in reconstruction. The barrio itself is an attempt to reconstruct the hopes of families who lost everything to Mitch. And together with the houses, at the very center of the barrio, a theatre is being born. The construction is still in initial stages: a cement floor defines a simple stage space, a series of beams support a tin roof; standing in what will be the audience you see a splendid backdrop of the mountains, and all around recently planted cedar seedlings are beginning to grow. I suddenly have the rare and strange feeling that I am in ancient Greece; that a theatre is being constructed for the people in a natural setting and as a fundamental part of the life of a community. Bread for the soul reclaims its place at the side of bread for the body, symbolized by all the material infrastructure of the new community.

Jack interrupts my thoughts; he tells me he would like to get started as soon as possible with some project for the children of the barrio, and not wait until all the construction is finished: "the important thing is to get started," he says. It's the first time I hear this phrase from him, and I have to confess that at that moment it left me a little perplexed: in my country, in my work, when someone says that it almost always means you are dealing with a person without ideas, without a project, and who dives in to projects that almost always fail. With Karol's help (and a lesson for her in basic arithmetic) we finish noting down the exact measurements of the theatre -- the reason for the trip -- and we return to the central city.

Two days later, after an acrobatics class, a rehearsal of the new play Réquiem por el padre Las Casas, a show of the program of Children's Stories in a village close to El Progreso, a costume fitting session and a rehearsal of songs from the shows, Jack asks me when I can get started with classes and training in stage combat. I'm a bit flustered; I don't see how it's possible to find free time to organize combat sessions in the midst of so much activity; but "the important thing is to get started." It's the second time in three days I hear Jack use that phrase, and I begin to suspect that it's not coincidence.