This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 7, 2017
The world’s first full-scale temporary working replica of one of the greatest theatres in history, the second Globe, will soon pop-up right next door to the iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl later this month.
From Sept 21 to Nov 12, Pop-up Globe will become the home of the most spectacular season of Shakespeare that Melbourne has ever seen. Pop-up Globe founder and artistic director Dr Miles Gregory says he believes Shakespeare’s work performed in the space it is written for is a completely unique and transformative experience.
The first Globe stood for 14 years until a disastrous fire demolished it in 1613. The second Globe was rebuilt on the same foundations by Shakespeare and his company significantly modifying the original first Globe to create what became one of the most famous theatres in history. Pop-up Globe uses as its historical reference point ground-breaking research by Associate Professor Tim Fitzpatrick and Russell Emerson of the University of Sydney to create the world’s first full-scale temporary working replica of Shakespeare’s theatre, the second Globe.
Pop-up Globe is a three-storey, 16-sided, 900-person-capacity theatre. It unites cutting-edge scaffold technology with a 400-year-old design to transport audiences back in time. No matter where they sit or stand in the theatre, audience members are never more than 15m from the heart of the action on stage. Sometimes, they will even find themselves in the play.
“Our audiences are blown away by the immersive experience of seeing Shakespeare performed in the space for which it was written. The relationship between actor and audience, the spectacular space itself, together with the power of Shakespeare’s incredible work, means attending plays at Pop-up Globe is totally different from anything you have seen before,” says Gregory. “This isn’t dusty Shakespeare. This is now. Alive. Like a part.”
The audacious project was originally planned as a one-off in Auckland to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016. Created entirely from scratch by an international company and cast in less than 18 months, Pop-up Globe took the city by storm welcoming more than 100,000 attendances in a season extended twice by popular demand.
Following hot on the heels of this initial sell-out success, a critically-acclaimed second season in 2017 attracted another 100,000 attendances. The phenomenon resulted in international interest from leading promoters and representatives from cities around the world who travelled to New Zealand to witness it for themselves.
The Pop-up Globe theatre will be constructed in the newly-christened Shakespeare Gardens adjacent to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl over a period of six weeks, and will feature all the spectacular theatrical trickery of the Jacobean era, including cannons, flaming arrows, hundreds of litres of fake blood, hand-forged armoury and more than 450 beautiful bespoke period costume pieces specially constructed by the Pop-up Globe in-house wardrobe department. Capped with an onion dome, Pop-up Globe will be a remarkable feature of the Melbourne cityscape, just as the second Globe was in London.
For its Melbourne season, Pop-up Globe brings with it a travelling festival of four critically-acclaimed productions — the riotous comedy As You Like It, the uproarious romcom Much Ado About Nothing, psychological thriller Othello and bloody war epic Henry V. Additionally, Melbourne audiences will be the first to see a specially-commissioned new show, Around the Globe in 60 Minutes!, which will thrust audiences into the maelstrom of history, allowing them to experience the triumphs and disasters that tell the incredible story of the second Globe theatre.
For more details, please visit popupglobe.com.au.