In the spring of 1972 I faced one of several momentous choices in my professional life. I could either join a theater company that was going on a tour around Italy or write a senior thesis on description theories. After considerable agony, I chose the latter, and also decided that, as I was clearly not serious enough about acting, I should give it up for good.

But this was not, by a long shot, the end of the matter. In the next 40 years, the theater remained more than a major source of entertainment for me, and more than a metaphor. My reflections on subjectivity, humanity, society, language, and politics modeled themselves upon its playful structure, upon the drama and the dialogue of it; I found characters, costumes, speeches, and spectators within physics and morality, education and history. I was not to be of the theater, but was forever to inquire into the theatricality of being.

It is therefore of great significance to me that an issue on philosophy and the theater should be my last one as Topoi’s editor. I thank Kevin Kennedy and all the contributors he recruited for making this occasion so special; and I wish Fabio Paglieri success comparable to his great intelligence, resourcefulness, and energy. From now on, I will be a caring, sympathetic audience for the show he and his collaborators will put on.

In 30 years of editing this journal not only did I never publish any of my own work in it; I never even signed anything with my name. The lone exception, which very much proves the rule, was Enrico Forni’s obituary in 1988. But a farewell is a liminal place (much like a stage, come to think of it): you are still, barely, in, but already on your way out. So let this be on the record: that my last act as an editor, the act by which I am no longer one, be that of appending my signature.

Ermanno Bencivenga