From his coat pocket, Marc pulled Peter Petersen’s “Jena Plan,”1 as he had presented it to the New Education Fellowship in Locarno in 1927. Everything was aligned towards the teacher it was impossible to create a space free of hierarchy here. Instead of a room with a big table, where talents and interests would emerge, where age levels would mingle, where students would assist each other, there were only oak benches, crammed closely together and bolted to the floor, the kind which force one to step in sideways. Three times, the principal gave exactly the same speech and ended with a compulsory suggestion: “I know, none of you will disappoint the new teacher.” Marc stood in front of his first students, his throat tight, and found himself unable to utter a word. The cisalpine school spirit already had a hold over the young. In this rubric we present various perspectives on theatre – historical and contemporary, intercultural and culture-specific, unexpectedly weird, unusually suspenseful, disturbedly gripping, fascinatingly enigmatic … With a sound reminiscent of military barracks, the desk lids fired upwards in salute as Gold Specs introduced Marc. Now sign this book or be marked absent.’ Mr Kennedy just grinned as if he was too cute. A redness was spreading into Mr Drumm’s face. ‘You will come here and do so now.’ ‘Oh, I signed it right enough,’ Mr Kennedy said happily.

‘You did not sign your name,’ Mr Drumm said. ‘Come here and sign your name, Mr Kennedy,’ he said.‘Oh, I signed me name,’ Mr Kennedy said without budging from his chair, and sure enough Jack had seen him bending over the book with a pencil in his hand.

One day, he made to pick up the book, then looked closely at it. Every morning when you came in, you signed the attendance book, and Mr Drumm would carry it off to his own table to mark the names of the latecomers in red ink. In this rubric we present various perspectives on theatre – historical and contemporary, intercultural and culture-specific, unexpectedly weird, unusually suspenseful, disturbedly gripping, fascinatingly enigmatic … In this autobiographical text, Irish author Hugh Leonard remembers moments from his youth that triggered his curiosity for theatre and set the course for his later career as a playwright/dramatist.

Home before night by hugh leonard