Interpreting Shakespeare through a te ao Māori

Te Wharekura o Mauao performed an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet set in pre-European Aotearoa with conflict between two whānau. All photos by Memory of Light Photography.

If you’ve ever seen Romeo and Juliet, you’ll remember the blood feud between the houses of Montague and Capulet. 

In the opening scene, two Capulet servants, joking around on the street, encounter two Montague servants, and a fight starts. Others join in, including the heads of both factions, until Prince Escalus puts a stop to it.

Now imagine that scene is set in pre-European Aotearoa, with traditional Māori clothing and weapons. Two servants of the Kapereira whānau are joking around, but things quickly turn serious when they meet servants of the rival Mōtiku whānau. 

This is what was performed by students from Tauranga-based Te Wharekura o Mauao – their group is called Rūrūtao from rūrū (to shake) and tao (spear) – at one of the 24 regional festivals held by the Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ.

From the regional festivals, one five-minute scene and one 15-minute scene are selected for performance in Wellington at the national SGCNZ University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival – with its inclusive ethos, it’s called a festival not a competition.

To the students’ delight, their Romeo and Juliet scene was chosen.

Journey to the festival

Hune played Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet.

Mary Meikle and Jenny Brown have run Rūrūtao as volunteers since 2018. Mary ran the te reo Pākehā (English) department before retiring, and Jenny is a retired English and drama teacher. They willingly put many hours into Rūrūtao.

“We chose the Romeo and Juliet scene this year because of how many Year 10 and 11 boys were keen to join Rūrūtao,” says Jenny. “With their background in mau rākau, a martial art based on traditional Māori weapons, it seemed a natural fit to place this fight scene between two feuding factions in a traditional Māori setting.” 

Head girl Hune, 17, played Prince Escalus.

“I loved the power that the prince brings into the scene last minute,” says Hune. “And I loved that we were bringing a play hundreds of years old to Aotearoa and adapting it to a Māori setting, with feuds between Māori whānau.”

For each scene at the festival, students choose their own time period, context, costumes, and usually direct their own scenes. The student director for Romeo and Juliet was Hune’s brother Tohu, 15, who also acted in it. 

“I liked how the scene kept the rage and anger between the two factions alive,” says Tohu, who takes full credit for getting his sister involved in Rūrūtao. 

“I do more kapa haka, but I told him ‘Sure, I’ll come act with you!’,” says Hune, who started with Rūrūtao in 2023 and has proved a star performer. This year, she acted in four of the group’s seven scenes at the regionals.  

Rūrūtao bussed to Wellington for the nationals, the second time performing there for Hune and Tohu. The students perfectly executed their performance, receiving loud applause and awards for Outstanding Student-Directed Ensemble and Outstanding Imagination and Commitment to the Text. 

“It was awesome to really connect with Shakespeare’s plays and students from other schools,” says Hune. 

Brother and sister act Tohu, 15, and Hune, 17.

Performing Shakespeare in te reo Māori 

Festival performances are required to use Shakespeare’s words, says Jenny, but translations are allowed. 

“Where appropriate, we translate words and phrases into te reo Māori, while making sure the meaning is clear for the audience.”

Over the eight years that Te Wharekura o Mauao has participated in the festival, it has intentionally chosen scenes that can interpret Shakespeare through a te ao Māori lens, Mary says. 

“It’s such an integral part of who our students are that it makes sense to work our scenes around that.

“Shakespeare has this highly metaphorical, elevated language, and that’s also part of Māori oratory,” explains Mary. “Our students pick up on the imagery, rhythms, cadences, ‘vocal’ stresses, and the iambic pentameter easily.”

“They also pick up on the themes and emotions of jealousy, love, power, rivalry – all things they see in real life. Their performances come from within them,” adds Jenny in agreement.

Wiremu Mako, head of performing arts at Te Wharekura o Mauao, chimes in. “Our culture is our superpower on the stage,” he says.

Indeed, Hune says that performing Shakespeare scenes felt “really natural”.

The dramatic first scene of Romeo and Juliet was chosen because many of the members of Rūrūtao have a background in mau rākau, a Maōri martial art.

Future opportunities

Hune is one of 48 students recently selected to attend the SGCNZ National Shakespeare Schools Production, a week-long intensive course held in Dunedin later this year. In past years, 11 Rūrūtao alumni have attended. 

“I’m excited to follow in the footsteps of my peers,” Hune says. 

Of the 48 students, 24 will be will be chosen to form the SCGNZ Young Shakespeare Company. In July next year, they will spend two weeks at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London for acting, voice and movement workshops, culminating in a performance on the Globe stage. They’ll end the trip with three days in Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. 

Kaitara and Manahi, two more Rūrūtao alumni, are part of the current Young Shakespeare Company. Jenny and Mary are travelling to London together to see them perform. It’s Jenny’s fifth time and Mary’s first. 

Will Hune be heading to London next year? Time will tell, but either way, she plans to apply for a place at Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School in Wellington. 

“Yes!’ says Hune enthusiastically when asked if Shakespeare has had a role in her future plans. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the resources to go to Wellington and experience so much.”

She’s excited to see what the future brings. 

The performance received awards for Outstanding Student-Directed Ensemble and Outstanding Imagination and Commitment to the Text.

Shakespeare: Relevant for 500 years

When speech and drama and public speaking teacher Rebecca Reed applied for the Deidre Snedden Scholarship, she didn’t think she’d get it. 

“I didn’t even tell my husband I was applying. When I heard that I got it, I thought ‘Wow, this is amazing!’”

Late speech and drama teacher Deirdre Snedden left most of her estate to the Speech Communication Association to be granted to speech and drama teachers seeking an overseas opportunity for professional development.

As a speech and drama teacher, Rebecca often works with Shakespeare’s texts. 

“With Shakespeare, I’m self-taught – which is great – but I thought ‘How can I get to the next level?’ and I thought this scholarship could help me do that.”

Rebecca Reed has won a prestigious scholarship to London’s Globe Theatre.

She worked hard on her scholarship application, outlining why she thought she should get it, where she wanted to go, what she wanted to learn, what she’d get out of it, what her students could get out of it, what New Zealand could get out of it.

The result? Rebecca is off to London’s Globe Theatre.

At the Globe – a modern reconstruction of the original Globe Theatre – Rebecca will participate in practical group workshops, enhancing her teaching techniques and strategies. 

She’ll see live performances of texts to get insights into their staging and interpretation. She’ll be in the audience for panel discussion ‘Shakespeare’s Many Queer Lives’, exploring diverse interpretations of queer themes in Shakespeare’s works. 

She’ll then visit Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon to delve into Shakespeare-related educational resources. Rebecca is particularly interested in learning about digital technologies that might help her teaching.

Her journey ends at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she’ll participate in its Introduction Certificate in Teaching Shakespeare course.

“Then I’ll bring back all that knowledge to my students,” she says of her rather long to-do list.

Rebecca teaches 80 young wāhine from St Oran’s College and Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt. Her lessons cover public speaking, drama, poetry, reading aloud, storytelling, improvisation, mime, voice management, interviewing, and more. Students work towards exams, from grade three to diploma level.

Her teaching around Shakespeare is very different to that of an English teacher.

“In speech and drama, studying Shakespeare teaches you essential skills like voice work, movement, and in-depth text analysis,” explains Rebecca. “It helps form a strong foundation for an actor’s development due to its challenging, diverse nature.”

“When you’re reading a text, such as a Shakespeare play, you need to know what it’s about, to feel it, to get it, to understand the character. Your delivery isn’t just reading the words and memorising like a robot. You use techniques like emphasis, pace, pitch and pause to bring it to life.”

Rebecca notes that some students initially think Shakespeare’s work is stuffy.

“But then they start enjoying the characters during the interpretation process and enjoy learning what was going on historically and socially during the Elizabethan period,” she says.

“They love learning about the modern adaptations of Shakespeare in film and are fascinated that he invented more than 2,000 words in the English language and loads of sayings that we hear today, such as ‘the world is your oyster’.” 

Playwright, poet and actor William Shakespeare.

Rebecca recently completed a Licentiate of Speech New Zealand in Speech and Drama Teaching – the equivalent to a master’s degree – which included doing a monologue as Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew. She actually started the Licentiate 20 years ago but put it aside to work in broadcast journalism and public relations.

Rebecca switched back to speech and drama four years ago when Sandra Bartlam, her former speech and drama teacher, friend and mentor, retired, asking Rebecca to take over her private speech and drama business teaching at St Oran’s College. 

“I thought ‘are you kidding? It’s been 20 years!’ But Sandra said I have the skills and life experience and could learn while I’m teaching,” she says.

So that’s what Rebecca’s been doing, now also teaching at Sacred Heart. One of Rebecca’s students is daughter Connie, 13, who will be studying Shakespeare before long. Her other children, 11 and five, are still learning the basics about Shakespeare. Rebecca looks forward to sharing her experiences at the Globe with them.