I was recently involved in helping with an exhibition on George Bernard Shaw, ie he who wrote Pygmalion, and then adapted it for the screenplay of My Fair Lady, of which he won an Academy Award. I didn't actually make the exhibit, as it was curated by a famous chap in Ireland, and I was just involved with setting it up. Tomorrow I have to take it down and ship it off to another part of this fair land, where it will be for a week before it is shipped off somewhere else.
It has been a fascinating experience for a number of reasons. One, I got to work with the Embassy of Ireland who organised the display (Shaw was Irish) and seeing as a fair number of us Kiwis have some Irish in them, cool. In fact, according to my sister's DNA test, we have something like a quarter Irish so am pretty happy about that, although my mother's been saying that for years about the Irish. I also got to read up on George, and what a character that chap was.
Most fascinating to me was how he created his GBS persona and how when he visited New Zealand in 1934, the nation was intrigued beyond belief with the famous visitor. Shaw was the first global celebrity of the modern age, totally self cultivated, the media ran daily reports on his travels, and Shaw himself was most happy to oblige..
I researched and wrote a post for a local heritage blog, link below, on the man himself and the visit. It was one of the
Here's the link if you'd like to take a look at GBS in NZ...
http://heritageetal.blogspot.com/2019/03/george-bernard-shaw-visitor-from-some.html
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