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Members will have noted the construction work being undertaken adjacent to our Ellerslie Event centre.
The purpose of the construction exercise is the erection of the "Pop Up Globe" the brain-child of our guest speaker Dr Miles Gregory.
 Dr Gregory was educated at King’s College Auckland, Durham University, University of Exeter and the University of Bristol emerging with a PhD in Shakespearean performance. In his time in the UK he held a number of posts in the theatre directing over 25 Shakespearean productions.
In 2012 he returned to New Zealand to help his family business. When that obligation wound down he was faced with the prospect of returning to the United Kingdom as career prospects for someone in his field were almost non-existent.
The concept of the pop-up globe arose when he was reading a story to his young daughter and using a pop-up book. That put the idea of a pop-up theatre into his head. He spoke to a scaffolder about the concept and 4 days later that scaffolder had produced a concept design.
The rest they say is history. Dr Gregory and created a job for himself in New Zealand and hopefully elsewhere in the world. It took 15 months from the concept being developed to the doors opening in central Auckland. 
One of the reasons Dr Gregory is so passionate about the pop-up globe is it transforms people’s views of Shakespeare’s works. They are performed as they are meant to be performed in front of an audience that from time to time finds itself part of the play. The effect of this is that people who would otherwise not want to attend productions or are attending only reluctantly have Damascene conversions and come to like and understand what Shakespeare was seeking to do. |
