File photo. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says funding for a school Shakespeare programme will continue, stepping in after Creative New Zealand declined it.
Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand's application for $31,000 was declined by Creative New Zealand, which said "the proposal did not demonstrate the relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa in this time and place and landscape."
The centre is behind the annual Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival, where high schools around Aotearoa perform scenes from the Bard's plays.
Some 120,000 students have performed in the festival since 1991.
Creative New Zealand's decision led to accusations it was trying to "cancel" Shakespeare, though it said other proposals simply aligned better with its priorities.
Ardern had previously said she disagreed with Creative New Zealand's decision, telling Morning Report she was not one of the decision-makers at the independent funding agency and would not always agree with all the decisions.
She revealed today she was committed to making sure the programme continued, and acknowledged the significant level of interest in the saga.
"I've been talking to our Minister of Education, and he has been talking with his ministry.
"The Ministry of Education intends to reach out to the Shakespeare Globe Centre to work with them to find a solution that ensures the programme will continue to be offered to schools."
Ardern said she expected to share more detail on a final resolution, but felt the Ministry of Education was the most sensible place for that programme to be offered.
"Not every decision that gets made by an independent agency will we always agree with. It struck me that actually this is one of those situations where it best sits with Education anyway. So we've found a solution and that's what we're going to do."
Education Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed the ministry would provide support to help the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand through its current financial difficulties, and go through the steps to ensure its work could continue.
"The Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival in particular has given thousands of young people the opportunity to be creative, and increase their confidence on stage," he said.
Māhanga Mitchell Photo:
Māhanga Mitchell, a student actor whose life was transformed, first, by discovering Shakespeare as a Year 13 student and then later performing in King Lear at the Globe in London, had also been following the controversy.
He said the high school festival events changed he trajectory of his life within a year.
"I went from not knowing what I was going to do once I left school, maybe go to work, to 'I want to go to Wellington to get a degree and I'm going to London'."
He said he understood why some felt the work of a white British man from the 1500s might not seem relevant, but that was not how it appeared to actors actors taking part in the programme.
"I feel like that's the whole point of why we perform Shakespeare, to modernise it and customise our performance to fit our own themes and ideas into it not these ones of colonial and imperialist demeanour."
"This opportunity was absolutely life-changing for me"- Māhanga Mitchell
Not having the school programme would be a lost opportunity for people like him who come from small rural communities, he said.
"If I could help someone else go on the same journey as me then yeah absolutely I'd help out."
Author and high school teacher Tania Roxborogh told Morning Report that questioning the relevance of Shakespeare in the 21st century missed the point of why it is taught in educational settings.
"If I want to improve my understanding of the way a language is used... I look at the very best of what that language has to offer" - Tania Roxborogh
"As an English teacher and former drama teacher, I look to Shakespeare as an exemplar of the best of English literature and yes his works were used I think as a tool of the coloniser.
"The two texts that the missionaries brought were the King James Version and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and I don't think that many of us ... would want to also get rid of the bible as well."
The literature's use of language, imagery, commentary on human nature, dramatic form and the stories were the reasons that students should be exposed to Shakespeare, she said.
Roxborogh was studying te reo Māori and said it was important when studying a language to gain understanding of its best literary works.
"If I want to improve my understanding of the way a language is used then I look to kōrero tuku iho, I look to mōteatea and whakataukī and the origins of those whakataukī and whakatauākī, I look at the very best of what that language has to offer."
The literature could be viewed through the lens of kaupapa Māori, she said.
This was embodied by the production of the 2002 film The Maori Merchant of Venice produced by Don Selwyn, she said.
"We can look at Shakespeare and we do through a kaupapa Māori lens, ... a Pacific Island lens, in the same way that with The Merchant of Venice we now look at it, read it, think about it through a post-holocaust lens."
She said people arguing against the relevance of Shakespearean literature in a "decolonising Aotearoa" had not experienced the joy that rangatahi found in studying and performing it the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival.