‘The Meeting was a striking experience for Ionesco: “If I had had the chance to spend more time there” he wrote, “maybe my life would have changed”. The maestro of the theatre of the absurd had landed in Rimini in 1987, together with Jean-Louis Bar-rault and Madeleine Ré-naud. He had been invited long time before but various problems, including old age, had made the journey difficult. That day, 27 August, the theme of the round table was “Child, paradise, theatre”. Whereas Barrault and his wife gave a great proof of their “being made for” the theatre, went much further. He spoke for a long time, as for a scrupolously prepared appointment, with curiosity and the wit which had made his texts great. And the young people at the Meeting encountered through his words and the passion which they were communicating, something which school textbooks had not been able to present or had artfully hidden. His “absur-d” unfolded in a reasonable position in front of reality: the wonder for things and the wonder before the world; the sense of dependence from the mystery which makes everything; the acknowledgement of evil, starting from small daily accidents; the desire for immortality, writing “in order to share with others the wonder of existence…”. We met a man like this: a witness. Such a true and impassioned encounter that Ionesco decided to come back and offer the Meeting the chance to produce the premiere of the music drama “Maximilien Kolbe”, realised from his unpublished script, with music by Dominique Probst, directed by Tadeusz Bradecki and Krzysztof Zanussi. In this way, 1988 saw the great event of a show which ended in a sort of contemplation of the figure of St Kolbe. The homage which the Meeting dedicates to Ionesco seeks to understand the various forms of expression against which the writer measured himself: spoken word (the round table “From the absurd to hope”), the gesture (a recital by the actor Paolo Graziosi), the figurative art (30 pictures by Ionesco exhibited for the first time and some very valuable pieces from his collection, amongst which one by Mirò dedi-cated to Rodica Ionesco, present in Rimini together with her daughter Marie-France).’