Sheared Pleated surfaces and Limiting Configurations for Hitchin's equations

A recent work by Mazzeo-Swoboda-Weiss-Witt describes a stratum of the frontier of the space of SL(2,C) surface group representations in terms of 'limiting configurations' which solve a degenerated version of Hitchin's equations on a Riemann surface.  We interpret these objects in (a mapping class group invariant way in) terms of the hyperbolic geometric objects of shearings of pleated surfaces, providing for an invariance of these boundary elements under a change of background Riemann surface.  We study asymptotics of opers (in this setting, complex projective structures) in this perspective.  (Joint with Andreas Ott, Jan Swoboda, and Richard Wentworth).