When James Erskine hit the road with a group of Shakespearean actors a few years ago, he could claim it was the first time the London Globe had been taken on the road since the days when the Black Death stalked Europe.

After packing their props and costumes in the back of a blue camper van the cast went on to perform an open air production of Romeo and Juliet at venues across Europe, including Leeds Castle, an Oxford college and, most memorably of all, Lord’s cricket ground.

“What could be better than two great national institutions working together,” Mr Erskine had observed. “There’s the famous balcony scene and the most famous balconies in world cricket.”

Such ambition and willingness to break free from the confines of theatre buildings is certain to go down well with his new employers, Oxford’s ground-breaking Creation Theatre Company.

Mr Erskine, aged 32, will begin work as Creation’s new creative producer and chief executive in the summer.

And he can be confident that he is taking the helm of a company that certainly likes to spread its wings. If in the past Mr Erskine has put on productions in spaces as diverse as a Roman amphitheatre and the back seat of a moving car, Creation can boast an equally impressive track record when it comes to relishing a change of scenery.

Creation has brought theatre to life in places as varied as the Cowley Mini plant, Oxford Castle, Headington Hill Park and the Said Business School, where the company will be staging a production of Antony and Cleopatra in the summer. “It will open the week I start in July,” said Mr Erskine. “It will be something of a baptism of fire.”

He is currently working as a producer at The Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, where he is overseeing the final rehearsals of a bruising new adaptation of the Sophocles tragic masterpiece Electra. Inevitably, he is soon discussing plans to take it to deepest Suffolk for open-air performances.

The new creative producer of Creation said: “I always believe geography plays an important part in shaping the experience of a play. We toured Shakespeare’s Globe productions all over Europe, performing the same play over and over again.

“But a show on a hillside in Lancashire is very different than one performed in a Roman amphitheatre in Austria.”

He has long been an admirer of David Parrish, the man he is to replace at Creation. Parrish, who set up the company 16 years ago is leaving to start a new life in Oslo with his Norwegian wife and their young children.”

Mr Erskine said: “He has delivered such great work in such unexpected places. Creation is a theatrical force of nature and the environs of Oxford provide the ultimate stage. The possibilities are mouthwatering.”

Seeing one of his production’s staged on the hallowed turf of Lord’s, performed in front of the famous pavilion, remains one of his fondest memories.

“We were given the home team’s dressing room. It was wonderful: all those wonderful wooden boards commemorating great players and it was the most smartly dressed audience I’ve ever seen.”

But what about the performance in the back of a car? Well, it turns out to have been a play called A Mobile Thriller, which was performed in the back of a Maserati driven around Edinburgh.

To keep the costs down, Mr Erskine played the chauffeur himself, sitting next to the desperate character on a mobile phone who appears to be living out a dangerous fantasy. The audience was restricted to the three people sitting in the back of the car.

“Not my most money-spinning production,” he now recalls.

It certainly caused a stir, with a spin-off production involving two cars, later performed in London.

At Creation, he will be faced with running a theatre company that has to survive without subsidy. Theatre companies are like oranges, he ventures.

“The more they are squeezed, the more juice you get out. You are judged by what you have done. I think being without subsidy can open as many doors as it closed. I’m excited by the challenge.”

Over 15 years, Creation has put on 45 shows, attracting audiences of 350,000. But it nevertheless found its future threatened back in 2007, when the wet weather and floods badly hit productions of Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew and The Oxford Passion, which between them had cost £350,000 to stage. Only a donation of £80,000 from a benefactor kept the ship afloat. But over the last two years Creation has become viable again.

The future of Creation is not causing him sleepless nights. The bags under his eyes he puts down to the birth of his son Albert, who was born in February. His partner, Jasmine Burnley, is a policy advisor for Oxfam.

As he posed for pictures high above the Said Business School, Mr Erskine said it was too early to give details of future productions and possible new venues.

But, as he eyed the rooftops of Oxford, the city was already looking the perfect stage for him as a new dawn beckoned for Creation.