Category Archives: ARTS

ARTS, ENTERPRISE

Q&A | Angus Vail on recreating Shakespeare’s Globe, with shipping containers

Angus Vail is shaking up the theatre community by developing a mobile version of Shakespeare’s Globe built using repurposed shipping containers. A rock ‘n’ roll guy from way back, the New Jersey-based Kiwi started out in the music industry as business manager for INXS in the band’s heyday, later taking on the same role for KISS. Almost 20 years later, he remains in what he thought would be a 5-year role. Despite his music biz background, Angus considers Shakespeare the ultimate punk rock hero, and was inspired to build a replica of the playwright’s famous Globe out of shipping containers off the back of a previous project that saw him employ the units as temporary venues.

The Container Globe team are currently working on plans to launch a prototype and educational programme in Detroit, thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign and the support of some of the brightest minds in architecture, production and engineering. Sarah found out more.

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ARTS, POLITICS

Q&A | Ryan McPhun, on his good band the Ruby Suns

Always trust a man in a jumpsuit. Ryan McPhun knows how to wear one well, and whilst performing musical acrobatics as a one-man act no less. In his band the Ruby Suns’ natural state he’s accompanied by two New Zealand padres, however since relocating to Oslo in pursuit of parenthood the Californian Kiwi has needed to think laterally. And employ all his limbs, to pull off the live version of his multi-layered productions in a solo capacity. He chats to Sarah about his latest album Sprite Fountain, impolite pram gangs, and the unsettling contradiction between Norway’s centre-far right politics and its ‘egalitarian’ social policy.

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