“Damn'd . . . & beat at rehearsal”: The character James Quin's stage management

Quin deserves recognition as a stage manager in Londons patent theatres between 1725 and 1751 because he compensated for John Rich's indifference to legitimate plays and for Charles Fleetwood's gentlemanly incompetence. As in his acting, Quin was adamantly dedicated to maintaining the established Augustan ideal.     

Gramsci's challenge to the politics of the left in ‘Our Times’

This article offers a detailed discussion of the writings of Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party. Gramsci's writings, and secondary source accounts of these, have had a profound influence in many areas of ‘radical’ adult and community education in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The article attempts, by returning to Gramsci's original texts and by interpreting them within his own ‘leitmotiv’, to challenge many of the current applications of his thought within radical education and ‘left’ political practice. The former types of applications are normally filtered through the political and academic writings of the latter; therefore the challenge offered, on behalf of Gramsci, is directed primarily at these.