Eugenio looks good

"How is Eugenio?" asked Phillip Zarilli.
"Good," I said, considering. "He looks good."
"He always looks good," said Phillip ruefully.
I laughed.

It's true, though -- Eugenio does always look good. He is awake, present, slim, incisive, open, listening, declarative, engaged, ready. He has always been lean and athletic, and in his late 60's, still is. He dresses with an Italian man's unconscious confidence, barefoot in sandals with a good cotton shirt, jeans, and a leather vest.

It is part of his overall integrity. His life works and he is at the center of it.

"Eugenio is doing what he's always done," I said. "He is doing what's before him, that is next to do. But recently, the things that are before him are very large. Like, for the Odin Teatret's 40th birthday, he made a whole new ensemble production, Andersen's Dream. They began work on that three years in advance. Plus, they are establishing the new Center for Theatre Laboratory Studies, which required building an entire second floor onto the theatre. These are the correct things. Necessary. And now is the time to do them. But they are expensive, too."

The only way out is through.

I am comforted by how Eugenio faces, accepts, and accomplishes his responsibilities, especially in the large sense -- the responsibilities of an artist to look far and high, and to do what he is called to do, regardless of the difficulty, while at the same time keeping everything going.

He could never do this alone. These are big visions, involving the entire Odin and a wide network of other organizations and people.