Bardwatching: Spring Term 1 2022-23

There's a new Shakespeare remix afoot, with Much Ado About Nothing undergoing a reality TV transformation in a production by poet and playwright Debris Stevenson at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End. The rising stars of National Youth Theatre are set to bring this story of gossip, matchmaking and manipulation to the stage in the 10th anniversary celebration of the NYT REP Company.

New Zealand's arts council has pulled its funding for a school Shakespeare festival, because it focuses on a ‘canon of imperialism’. The Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival is a secondary school competition in which students perform excerpts from the Bard's best-loved plays. Since it was first launched in 1992, more than 120,000 high school students have taken part in the festival, which is run by the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand. The funding from Creative New Zealand – the country's arts funding body – represented around 10 per cent of the festival's overall costs, which will now have to be sought elsewhere.