Pour one out for Shakespeare, the world’s most cancelled man.
If you’ve been fortunate enough to be away from all news sources since late September, you’ve managed to avoid some supreme Discourse in New Zealand, and I’m jealous of you. It’s Day 20 of this nonsense and I’m about ready to walk into the woods to escape it.
The discourse in question comes down to Shakespeare.
More specifically, “Is Creative New Zealand cancelling Shakespeare?”
The answer to that is no. Unequivocally no. Don’t worry, this time next year, any child in any high school drama class across the country will be able to hear NZ’s future actors perform incredible Shakespeare, alongside people stumbling through To be or not to be.
Before we start, let me say. I love Shakespeare. I did Sheilah Winn, like most of you, and have played a ton of his roles on stage - Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favourite plays! I’m a professional theatremaker with a MFA in theatre, have toured plays nationally and abroad, and I also write as a theatre reviewer. Just giving you some context before those who are reading this from afar doubt my credentials (as though degrees matter when it comes to talking about art).
Here are the facts about this debacle:
- Creative New Zealand currently has limited financial flexibility, due to a series of factors, including but not limited to: lack of an increase in their baseline funding, as well as the removal of COVID-19 support from the government. (Dr James Wenley has an excellent CNZ breakdown here.)
- The Shakespeare’s Globe Centre New Zealand (SGCNZ, based in Wellington) runs the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare competition, which high schools from all across the country perform in.
- SGCNZ applied for a $31000 grant from CNZ, predominantly to get an Executive Assistant. This funding was declined in the last CNZ funding round.
- SGCNZ does not rely on this funding to run the Sheilah Winn competition. The majority of global reporting since has glossed over this fact exponentially.
- One CNZ assessor in feedback, stated that Shakespeare was “located within a canon of imperialism”. This has formed the basis of a lot of criticism.
- SCGNZ supporter Terry Sheat called for a public inquiry in an open letter, calling CNZ an “artistic Taliban”.
- Every person in the world who has brushed up against Shakespeare within their lives has decided to have a hot take on this issue. Most people are doing so without having read any informed articles on the subject.
So has Shakespeare been cancelled?
Obviously not.
A creative body that has been getting funding for a while did not get a tiny sliver of the funding they’re used to. No plans have changed, nothing has been stopped, there’s literally just a tiny loss of funding — funding that has been redirected to other outlets; including the Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival — something that has been bringing incredible art to a region that desperately needs it. (I’m from Tairāwhiti, I can say that with a degree of knowledge.)
And yet, social media and traditional media outlets are exploding.
Have you heard about the other places that lost out of CNZ funding this funding round? I bet you haven’t.
Alongside literally me and many of my contemporaries, Auckland Pride, Dunedin Fringe, the New Zealand Fringe Festival, Nightsong, A Slightly Isolated Dog and Binge Culture — all wholly established creatives — weren’t funded (either in the CNZ three-year round of the Toi Uru Kahikatea grants, or the annual Arts Grants).
And yet, none of them have gotten the same coverage as SGCNZ losing out on one 30k portion of funding.
Why? ’Cause the internet outrage machine has fanned the flames.
“Shakespeare cancelled for imperialism!” The Guardian headline cries, “Where will it end?”
The joyous bunch who have nothing better to do than reply to comments on the internet decry this funding move as a win for woke culture. “They want to bury well-mannered English culture in the ground!” They say, idolizing a man whose work, while poetic and good, also is rife with dick jokes.
“Woke virtue signalling!” They scream, while somehow managing to make this all Jacinda’s fault. (Literally as I write this, Jacinda Ardern has just announced that the Ministry of Education is looking into providing funding for SGCNZ, thus presumably proving that if we whinge enough on the internet about missing out on arts funding we’ll all be granted a boon from the govt.)
Shakespeare has not been cancelled, and probably never will be. The guy is resonant, has been taught in schools for forever, and will continue to be staged — because his themes are relevant, but that does not divorce him from the colonialist ideals that his plays were written in. Shakespeare can be performed by people of colour, can be set in new locations and new times, but his words were still written in the 1500/1600s, and still contain colonialist attitudes.
But I digress.
We’ve solved this now. SGCNZ will get their thirty thousand dollars for an Executive Assistant. Some of NZ’s theatrical exports will pat themselves on the back for giving a few quotes to some reactionary articles about a topic they don’t fully know the context of.
The world goes on.
But arts funding doesn’t.
Sam Brooks has written quite extensively about this over the last couple of weeks — about the grim realities of arts funding in this country; and the fact is, they’re dire.
Speak to any professional artist, particularly theatremakers, and you will instantly get an idea of this dire state. In my entire history of professional practise, I’ve lost more grants than I can count, and people more established than me frequently lose grants too. Losing an expected grant for a smaller company (not a big body with additional funding like SGCNZ) can completely derail a year’s worth of work — and believe me, I’m not talking about sums of money that are anywhere near minimum wage.
The grant application system through CNZ is particularly challenging, and there’s nothing out there at all for those artists who are emerging, those who don’t have any established base to fall back on.
We are all suffering, especially because of COVID, and there’s nothing more we can do about it. We make art because we love it, because we have something to say, because we feel drawn to it, and because we need to — but that desire does not overrule the fact that we also need to live too.
So, take from this not a diatribe about cancel culture, but a desire for change. Scratch that, a need for change.
Don’t focus on whining about cancel culture when one guy from the 1600s doesn’t get promoted as much as he used to. He’s still going to be there if you have a desire to read about lost love or lost lives.
Worry about the artists in the here and now; the ones who are starving, underpaid, underfunded, and burnt out, the ones we’re losing to other industries, and the ones who’ll never be able to tell their stories because they don’t have the money to make it happen.
Fund CNZ better.
Give us an actual chance.
Then we can talk about Shakespeare.
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Additional Reading
- Sam Brooks, The Spinoff — “Hear me out: Shakespeare shouldn’t get public funding”
- Sam Brooks, The Spinoff — “The Grim Realities of Arts Funding”
- James Wenley, Stuff — “The fuss over Shakespeare is a distraction from the real scandal of arts funding”
- Eva Corlett, The Guardian — “New Zealand pulls funding for school Shakespeare festival, citing ‘canon of imperialism’”
- The Big Idea — “Funding Shock — TBI Investigates”
