Words Worth Noting - August 2, 2023

“The Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival is a secondary school competition... More than 120,000 students have taken part in the event since it was established 30 years ago. For the past decade it has been awarded about NZ$30,000 annually from Creative New Zealand. But this year, the organization has withdrawn its contribution. A board member from the country’s arts body said: ‘I question whether a singular focus on an Elizabethan playwright is most relevant for a decolonizing Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) in the 2020s and beyond.’ Another member said the funding was withdrawn because the festival represented a ‘canon of imperialism.’... Nicola Hyland, a senior lecturer in theatre at Wellington’s Victoria University, said... ‘It would be a massive, awesome act of decolonization if we discovered our own stories first and discovered Shakespeare afterwards,’... But the head of Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand... Dawn Sanders... said: ‘Just like the MeToo movement, Measure for Measure explored misogyny, Taming of the Shrew explores the way women are controlled and Othello looked at cheating and manipulation.’ The festival allowed students to interpret the plays in many ways, she added, with pupils free to introduce elements from their own cultures, from Maori and Pacific Islander to Asian. ‘Not many scenes are done in doublet and hose anymore,’ she said.”

Daily Telegraph story in National Post October 15, 2022 [think they’ll do one about the “Musket Wars” and the Moriori genocide?]