Synchronicity can bring forward strange events in the life of an artist. In 1965, arriving in Perugia in northern Italy, I felt a profound sense of familiarity and connectedness, which has no rational explanation. I had come to study Italian language at the university. I was a young woman of twenty-three, returning to Europe for the first time since I had left Hungary with my family at the age of five.

Within a few weeks I had left Il Università per Straniere in Perugia and decided to learn Italian where it was spoken as a living language. I heard that The Festival of Two Worlds, a major European arts festival, was in preparation at Spoleto, a medieval town near Perugia. Like an arrow, I hastened there to secure a job with the festival.

The festival secretary telephoned her director and said she had an interesting young theatre director from Australia who was desperate to see him. An appointment was made for the following day. I hitchhiked to Rome for the meeting.