Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal were the Artistic Directors of LIFT – the London International Festival of Theatre – from its conception in 1979 until their joint resignation in 2004. In this interview they discuss with Phoebe Patey-Ferguson the initial motivations and challenges of establishing an international festival in London and how these changed in maintaining the organization over twenty-five years. This conversation took place in London on 15 February and 14 March 2018, and complements the preceding article in this issue of NTQ by Patey-Ferguson, analyzing the socio-political circumstances of its early years.

In this article, Linda Mackenney explores the four epic plays John McGrath wrote between 1989 and 1996 in the aftermath of his forced resignation from 7:84 Scotland in 1988. These were produced in association with David MacLennan of Wildcat Stage Productions and televised by McGrath's Freeway Films for Channel Four in the 1990s. McGrath died of leukaemia in 2002, and MacLennan died earlier this year after a battle with motor neurone disease; but the work they did together in the 1990s forms a significant part of their legacy. Linda Mackenney was introduced to McGrath's work as a student, when she attended the lectures at the University of Cambridge which were later published as his seminal critical work, A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class, and Form. She carried out the research for 7:84 Scotland's Clydebuilt Season in 1982, was the creator of the Scottish Theatre Archive at Glasgow University Library, and is the author of The Activities of Popular Dramatists and Drama Groups in Scotland, 1900–1952 (Edwin Mellen Press, 2000). She was a member of the 7:84 Scotland Board of Directors between 1983 and 1988 and is currently completing a study of John McGrath's theatre writings.