Come on Auckland: Let's keep Shakespeare's Pop-Up Globe
The Pop-Up Globe has been a remarkable success but what now?
The Pop-Up Globe in Auckland has been a remarkable success, achieving a total audience of moe than 80,000 people including 20,000 schoolchildren.
It has shown that there is an appetite for Shakespeare and theatre generally with audiences including people who would normally not go to the theatre. The Pop-Up Globe has also been seen by tourists as a local cultural experience and there have been a number of domestic tourists.
So what happens now? It is supposed to be taken down and confined to being a part of our transient cultural history. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It could be retained; it needs to be retained.
The ideal solution would be to move it a hundred metres south into Myers Park where it could have a new future.
The park is one of the most underutilised areas in central Auckland and the presence of the Globe would give new life to the area.
A relocated Globe could join the host of other Globe theatres around the world from the Ice Globe in northern Sweden on the banks of the river Torne to the Old Globe in San Diego.
These theatres attract audiences from around the world and are part of the growing number of theatres that also feature annual Shakespeare festivals. It would allow Auckland to also provide an annual Shakespeare festival as well as providing another theatre venue.
With the addition of the carefully designed glazed canopy that Shakespeare never got around to designing, the theatre could be used year round.
Although the recent Pop-Up Globe seasons probably took revenue from the Auckland Festival, it would mean that future festivals would be able to make use of the Pop-Up Globe to expand and enhance the event.
Tune into NBR Radio’s Sunday Business with Andrew Patterson on Sunday morning, for analysis and feature-length interviews.
John Daly-Peoples
Fri, 22 Apr 2016
Fri, 22 Apr 2016
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Come on Auckland: Let's keep Shakespeare's Pop-Up Globe
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