Pop-up Globe
[1] Pop-up Globe's first international season, promoted by Live Nation Entertainment, ran from 21 September to 3 February 2018 in an area of Kings Domain adjacent to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, Australia, which was temporarily called the Shakespeare Gardens.
The first season, featuring the Pop-up Globe Theatre Company performing Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet, with independent visiting productions of Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra and Hamlet, opened on 18 February 2016, as part of the commemorations of the quatercentenary of Shakespeare's death.
Romeo and Juliet (directed by Ben Naylor) was performed in emblematic modern dress, with Jonathan Tynan-Moss and Christel Chapman playing the title roles; Twelfth Night (directed by Miles Gregory) was performed in Jacobean dress by an all-male cast including Daniel Watterson as Olivia, Aaron Richardson as Viola, Stanley Andrew Jackson III as Malvolio and Adrian Hooke as Feste.
Over the course of the season, the programme was supplemented with a range of enrichment activities including classes on stage, public talks, a book launch, and guided tours of the playhouse.
Loop Media presented a one-night concert, Play On, in which a collection of NZ musicians performed Shakespeare soliloquies set to music by Paul McLaney.
Over 1,200 actors from around the world applied to be part of the audition process that took place through October 2016, and in a media launch on October 25 Pop-up Globe revealed their new location – in the gardens at Auckland's oldest racing club, Ellerslie Racecourse – and the plays that would make up the season: Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, As You Like It and Henry V. This time, Pop-up Globe would have two in-house repertory companies meaning the theatre could open 7 days a week offering 2 performances a day, without reliance on outside productions to keep the doors open.
The Pasifika-infused Much Ado About Nothing featured Semu Filipo and Jacque Drew as Benedick and Beatrice and was set on a banana plantation with Dogberry and Verges functioning as customs officers in charge of ensuring no illegal or dangerous produce entered the island.
Henry V starred Chris Huntly-Turner in the title role, with the company shifting from Jacobean dress in the court scenes to full medieval armour once in France.
The production made use of scaling ladders, pyrotechnic-firing cannons, and flaming arrows were fired across the playhouse into the frons scenae during the siege of Harfleur.
The third iteration of Pop-up Globe was constructed at the back of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in the King's Domain over August and September 2017, with much of the decorative interior including the frons scenae carefully dismantled anc shipped from the Ellerslie playhouse.
The four NZ shows were joined in repertory by a new production, Around The Globe In 60 Minutes, featuring an Australian cast and written especially for the playhouse by Tom Mallaburn and directed by John Walton.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (directed by Miles Gregory) had portions of its script translated into Te Reo Māori by Pierre Lyndon.
Jason Te Kare doubled as Theseus and Oberon, Edward Peni played Hippolyta and Titania, and Reuben Butler originated the role of Puck.
The same company performed The Merchant of Venice (directed by David Lawrence) in Jacobean dress in a production that tried to solve the play's difficulties by embracing and amplifying them.
Julius Caesar (directed by Rita Stone) was presented by a reverse-gender cast in modern dress, with the premise of Rome as a female-led society where men were indentured slaves.
The same company performed The Comedy of Errors (directed by Miles Gregory) in Mediterranean dress featuring belly dancing and Whirling Dervishes, with Ephesus as a military police state.
The five productions played a combined total of 160 performances over the season, with A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice extending by a fortnight at the end of the run, which finally closed on Sunday 15 May 2018.
The Taming of the Shrew (directed by Brigid Costello & David Lawrence) featured Natasha Daniel and Jamie Irvine as Katherina and Petruchio and was presented in 17th century Italian dress, with a rewritten version of the play's original framing device—in this case, Christopher Sly was a drunken audience member who passed out in the yard so that the cast could enlist the audience's support in their plan to gull him by dressing him in Jacobean attire and insisting when he regained consciousness that he was in England in 1616.
Richard III (directed by Miles Gregory) starred Stephen Butterworth in the title role and featured authentic medieval pageantry, lavish Jacobean costumes, and a recreation of the Battle of Bosworth that included armies fighting with pikes and firing arquebuses.
Hamlet (directed by David Lawrence) starred Adrian Hooke in the title role and was presented in Jacobean dress and investigating how the original staging might have worked, with use of a 'fast trap' to enable to Ghost to appear and disappear rapidly.
Scenic designer Malcolm Dale designed a touring set resembling an indoor Jacobean playhouse that could be easily reconfigured for differently-sized stage spaces and the Nottingham's Company's productions of Measure For Measure and Hamlet were remounted and revised for the touring set, with some major adjustments being made to both productions to reflect that they would be performing indoors in proscenium arch theatres.
In addition to undertaking a nationwide tour, in April 2019 Pop-up Globe announced that they would present their first ever winter season in the Ellerslie playhouse in Auckland as part of ATEED's Elemental Festival.
The partnership with ATEED would enable Pop-up Globe to build a temporary roof over the playhouse yard to provide protection from the weather for the groundlings.
After considering ticket sales and weighing up the needs of that year's Australian transfer, the decision was made before rehearsals began to replace The Roaring Girl with a revival of 2017’s A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Twelfth Night (directed by Miles Gregory) was an entirely new production, utilising largely Elizabethan dress rather than Pop-up Globe's usual Jacobean costuming.
Its cast included Rebecca Rogers as Viola, Sheena Irving as Olivia, Jonathan Martin as Malvolio and Keagan Carr Fransch as Feste.
The four productions played in repertory until Pop-up Globe Perth closed on Sunday 8 December 2019 after a combined total of 107 performances to an audience of approximately 60,000 people.
Much Ado About Nothing starred Renee Lyons and Rutene Spooner as Beatrice and Benedick and was a revival of Miriama McDowell's 2017 Pasifika-themed production but with an entirely new cast except for Theo David reprising his performance as Claudio.
The many strands of Pop-up Globe's Youth Theatre classes also combined for one night in December to present King Lear with different sections of the play performed by different age groups.
Emilia was the last production to perform at the Ellerslie playhouse, opening on Thursday 5 March 2020 amidst growing public concern about the approaching Covid-19 pandemic.
