New Zealand School withdraws funding from Shakespeare Festival

The school festival, which has been held in New Zealand schools for three decades, will no longer receive funding from the New Zealand Arts Council, which “decided to stop supporting the festival after questioning its relevance in the current context through its focus on a canon of imperialism”. Sheila’s Shakespeare Festival is held annually in secondary schools across the country and is a competition organized by the Shakespeare Globe Center New Zealand in which students perform pieces from Shakespeare’s works.

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This decision has generated both positive and negative reactions, as the event includes not only acting but also the production of the piece in terms of costumes, scenery and other elements. Since the competition began thirty years ago, more than 120,000 students have taken part in the competition, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The Arts Council allocates $30,000 annually to this event.

In a document publicizing the decision, it describes the event as having an impact on New Zealand’s youth, but it “does not demonstrate the relevance of the context of contemporary art in Aotearoa at this time, place and landscape”. Some of the Arts Council’s concerns focused on the festival’s “paternalistic” spirit, asserting that the type of work presented was “located within the canon of imperialism and deprived of the opportunity to create a curriculum of life and relevance”.

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A consultant to the Arts Council told The Guardian that the application made them wonder whether “a singular focus on the Elizabethan playwright is more relevant to decolonizing Aotearoa in the 2020s and beyond”. Dan Saunders, director of the organization organizing the festival, told English media, “Creative New Zealand says it’s inappropriate for modern New Zealand; The opposite is true. We deal with what people think, the human psyche, competition, jealousy, misogyny and many other things that are completely relevant.”

Saunders also said the council ignored the fact that many of the students participating in the festival were from the country’s minority ethnic groups, saying, “More than 76% of productions are student-directed, so we’re creating young leaders and thinkers. On the other hand, Nicola Hyland, a drama professor at Victoria University of Wellington and The Atihaunui-a-Babarangi, Ngati Houthi descent , while recognizing the value of Shakespeare’s work, told The Guardian that he believed it was overrated.country.

“If we discover our own history first and then Shakespeare, that would be a huge and impressive act of decolonization,” Hyland said.

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