The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust is delighted to welcome Dr. Parul Purohit Vats as Artistic Advisor to our Volunteer Performing Arts Programme.

Every artistic journey begins somewhere.

Sometimes it begins with a page: a line of Shakespeare spoken aloud for the first time, until ink becomes breath, character and life.

Sometimes it begins with rhythm: the measured strike of a foot, the turn of a body, the quiet music of ghungroos carrying stories across generations.

And sometimes, two traditions that have travelled very different roads arrive, unexpectedly, at the same stage.

It is in this spirit that we welcome Dr. Parul Purohit Vats to The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust.

An accomplished practitioner and educator in Kathak, performing arts, choreography and storytelling, Dr. Vats brings with her not simply an artistic discipline, but a living tradition — one in which movement becomes language, rhythm holds memory, and the body itself becomes a storyteller.

Having recently made Auckland her new home after journeying from India, Dr. Vats now brings that artistic heritage into a city shaped by many cultures, languages and histories.

Her appointment marks an important step in the Trust's developing vision for performing arts education.

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust was founded on the belief that great literature and the arts should not remain behind the covers of books or beyond the doors of theatres. They should be encountered, spoken, questioned, performed and shared. They should give young people opportunities to discover not only the voices of great writers and artistic traditions, but also voices of their own.

Shakespeare and Kathak may appear, at first, to belong to distant worlds.

One comes to us through the written and spoken word; the other through rhythm, gesture, expression and movement. One grew from the stages of Elizabethan England; the other carries centuries of Indian storytelling tradition.

Yet beneath those differences lies something profoundly shared.

Both ask how human beings love and lose, hope and struggle, misunderstand and reconcile. Both transform stories into living experience. Both remind us that across centuries, languages and borders, the deepest human emotions require remarkably little translation.

Under Dr. Vats's artistic guidance, our Volunteer Performing Arts Programme will continue to explore theatre, movement, voice and storytelling, while opening new possibilities for young performers and volunteers to encounter artistic traditions beyond their own.

Her work will also extend into Kathak and Wellbeing programmes through Shakespeare Education Ltd, creating another space in which artistic practice, movement and human wellbeing may meet.

For us, this collaboration represents more than the arrival of an Artistic Advisor.

It represents the kind of community we hope to build.

Here in Auckland, many of us have brought our stories across oceans. We arrive with different languages, different memories and different traditions — yet art gives us a place where those differences do not have to disappear in order for us to belong together.

A Shakespearean line may meet an Indian rhythm.

A young person may discover a culture that was not inherited from their family.

A volunteer may arrive intending to teach and find themselves learning.

A stage may become, for a little while, common ground.

Some collaborations begin with carefully drawn blueprints. Others begin in a conversation, when two people recognise that although they have travelled by different roads, they have been walking toward the same horizon.

Ours began the second way.

We are honoured to have Dr. Vats walking this next part of the journey with us, and we look forward to the performances, classrooms, conversations and unexpected possibilities that will grow from it.

Welcome, Dr. Vats.

May the quill and the ghungroo find a shared stage here — and may the stories they carry travel further together than either could alone.

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust

Auckland, New Zealand

A Bilingual Reading & Discussion of The Merchant of Venice

Sunday, 4 October 2026 | 2:00–4:00 PM. Te Mārama Room, Central City Library. Led by Volunteer Facilitator Milton. Bilingual: English & Chinese.

More than four hundred years have passed since Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice.

The theatres have changed. The streets have changed. The world has changed.

And perhaps we, too, have changed enough to read the play differently.

For generations, The Merchant of Venice has been remembered for its famous scenes and unforgettable images: a bond, a pound of flesh, a courtroom, a ring, and a plea for mercy.

Yet a great work of literature rarely remains inside the meaning first given to it.

Every generation returns with different questions.

Was Shylock simply the villain audiences were once encouraged to see — or a man shaped by humiliation, exclusion and anger?

Is Antonio only the generous and loyal friend, or does his treatment of Shylock complicate our sympathy for him?

When Portia speaks so beautifully of mercy, what does mercy mean if it is praised in words but not equally extended in life?

And when Jessica leaves her father, her home and her faith for another world, should we read her story as liberation, betrayal, love, loneliness — or perhaps several of these at once?

These questions do not diminish Shakespeare.

They are among the reasons Shakespeare remains alive.

Great literature does not always tell us where to stand. Sometimes it places us in an uncomfortable room, opens several windows, and asks us to look through each one before deciding what we have seen.

On Sunday, 4 October 2026, from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, volunteer facilitator Milton will lead a bilingual English–Chinese reading and discussion of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice at Te Mārama Room, Central City Library, presented by The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust.

This gathering will not be a search for the single “correct” interpretation of the play.

Instead, we will read across time.

We will consider the world in which Shakespeare wrote, while also bringing the questions of our own century to the table: prejudice and belonging, money and morality, law and mercy, religious difference, gender, friendship, love, power, and the difficult boundary between justice and revenge.

We will ask not only, “What did Shakespeare mean?”

We will also ask, “What can we see now that an earlier audience might have seen differently?”

And there is another journey taking place in this seminar — a journey between languages.

A sentence read in English may carry a particular rhythm, ambiguity or historical echo. Read again in Chinese, it may reveal another shade of feeling.

Translation does not merely carry words from one language to another. Sometimes it turns the object slightly in the light, allowing us to notice a contour that was previously hidden.

That is why we value bilingual reading.

Not because one language must explain the other, but because two languages can place two lamps beside the same page.

We welcome readers who know Shakespeare well, and those meeting The Merchant of Venice for the first time.

You do not need to arrive with an answer.

Bring a question. Bring a passage that troubles you. Bring a character you cannot quite forgive — or cannot quite condemn. Bring your twenty-first-century eyes to a four-hundred-year-old play.

Read slowly. Listen to another voice. Look through another window.

Because perhaps the purpose of reading Shakespeare today is not to agree with everything we find there, nor to place the past on trial according to the present.

It is to enter a complicated human world without demanding that it become simple.

It is to discover how differently the same story can appear when we move from one character to another, from one century to another, from one language to another.

And perhaps literature, at its finest, teaches us something rarer than certainty: how to look again.

One play. Two languages. Many perspectives.

Sunday, 4 October 2026 | 2:00–4:00 PM. Te Mārama Room, Central City Library. Volunteer Facilitator: Milton. English & Chinese Bilingual Discussion.

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust

Auckland, New Zealand

Is It Enough?, Karen, and the Journey from a Script into the Community

Some stories are written at a desk, but they do not truly begin their journey until someone picks them up and carries them beyond it. Is It Enough?, a children's musical play written by Founder Helena Yingge Li, was inspired by the account of the five loaves and two fish in John 6:1–14. At the centre of the story is a child facing an impossible proportion: what he holds in his hands is very small, while the need before him is immense. Five loaves, two fish, one child — and a question that gives the play its name: Is it enough?

On the surface, it is a story about hunger, giving and a miracle. Beneath it, however, lies a question that belongs just as much to our own time: what can one ordinary person do when what we possess seems so small beside what is needed? The boy in the play is not presented as naturally fearless or heroic. He is hungry himself. He hesitates and holds tightly to his basket because it belongs to him and because he needs it. Yet when he sees the hunger around him, he begins to understand that the smallness of what he has does not necessarily make it meaningless. At one of the turning points of the play, he asks Andrew, “But keeping them in my lap won't feed them either. Will it?”

This is also why Is It Enough? has a place within the work of The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust. Although Shakespeare stands at the heart of our name and much of our work, our understanding of cultural education has never been confined to one writer, one country or one tradition. Shakespeare matters because great literature allows young people to encounter the enduring questions of human life: love and betrayal, justice and mercy, fear and courage, conscience, responsibility and belonging. But these questions do not belong to Shakespeare alone. They travel across centuries, languages, cultures and faith traditions.

For us, cultural education should not build walls around culture; it should open doors between cultures. A young person may encounter Shakespeare, a Chinese classical story, a biblical narrative or another great work from the world's literary and cultural traditions, and discover that works born thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart can still ask surprisingly similar questions about what it means to be human. Theatre makes that encounter especially powerful because a story is no longer simply read. It acquires voices, faces, movement, music and the presence of other people.

But a script can remain perfectly safe on a shelf. It needs people willing to carry it into the world. For Is It Enough?, one of those people has been our volunteer Karen.

Karen has been actively working to bring the play into contact with schools, students, educators and communities. She has travelled around Auckland, visiting and approaching schools, making connections and exploring possibilities for young people to study or perform the work. Her efforts have also taken her far beyond Auckland to the Bay of Islands, where she continued to introduce the play, make contact with others and exchange ideas with people involved in education. Much of this work happens far away from a stage: on the road, in conversations, through messages, school visits and introductions. Yet this quiet work is often how a community production truly begins.

What has been particularly valuable is that Karen has not treated the script as something finished and untouchable. Through her conversations with other educators and through her own close engagement with the work, she has continued to bring questions and ideas back to the Trust. She and Helena have remained in regular contact, discussing not only how the play might be introduced to young people, but how the work itself could become stronger.

One question became especially important: Should Jesus appear physically on the stage?

In the present version of Is It Enough?, Jesus does not appear before the audience. His presence is conveyed through the gaze of the crowd, the responses of the disciples, narration, silence and, if desired, an offstage voice. This was originally intended as an act of theatrical restraint and reverence. Karen, however, felt differently. She believed that because Jesus stands at the centre of the biblical story, particularly in a work intended for children and young people, his presence should not remain entirely outside the visible dramatic world.

Her suggestion led to a much deeper conversation between Karen and Helena. Can an ordinary person portray Jesus? Would a visible Jesus help children enter more fully into the story, or could such a portrayal risk losing the reverence the story requires? If Jesus is brought onto the stage, how should the actor approach the role so that the performance remains humble, sincere and respectful rather than theatrical for its own sake?

These conversations did not produce an immediate answer. They continued, and gradually the playwright's own thinking changed. Helena came to agree with Karen that Jesus should appear, and the script will now be revised accordingly. The challenge is therefore no longer simply whether Jesus should be seen, but how his presence can be represented with simplicity and reverence. The actor should not become the spectacle; rather, the performance should help young people understand the compassion, calm and generosity at the centre of the story.

For the Trust, there is something important in the way this change came about. Education cannot mean asking young people to question, discuss and reconsider ideas while the adults who teach them refuse to do the same. A cultural and educational organisation should itself remain capable of listening. A playwright may begin a work, but once theatre enters a community, other eyes begin to see it. A volunteer may notice something the writer did not. An educator may ask a different question. A rehearsal may reveal something that could never have been discovered at a writing desk.

This is also how we understand the role of volunteers within The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust. Volunteers are not simply people to whom tasks are assigned. They can be readers, questioners, facilitators, performers, teachers and bridges between the Trust and the wider community. Karen did not simply take Is It Enough? from Helena and carry it outward; through her journeys, conversations and questions, she also brought something back. Her contribution has become part of the continuing creative life of the work.

There is, perhaps, an unexpected connection between Karen's journey and the little boy at the centre of the play. The boy cannot feed thousands by himself. Karen cannot make every school open its doors. A playwright cannot bring a play into every classroom, and a young cultural and educational trust cannot begin with every resource it would like to possess. Instead, the play asks what happens when human limitation is acknowledged, but we are still willing to begin with what is already in our hands.

That idea has meaning far beyond this particular play. Community education often begins without abundance. It begins with a manuscript, a volunteer, a conversation with an educator, a school willing to listen, a journey from Auckland to the Bay of Islands, or a child willing to step onto a stage for the first time. None of these things alone is enough to accomplish everything. Yet without those first small acts, nothing begins at all.

Near the end of Is It Enough?, the boy realises that perhaps he has been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking only, “Do I have enough?”, he begins to ask, “Will I open my hands?”

Perhaps this is also one way to describe the purpose of a cultural and educational trust: to open a book, to open a stage, to open one culture toward another, and to open conversations in which writers can listen to volunteers, volunteers can listen to educators, and adults can listen seriously to the questions children bring with them.

Is It Enough? is still travelling, and its next destination has not yet been fully written. But Karen's journeys through Auckland and to the Bay of Islands have already shown us something important: sometimes a story begins with a writer, but it becomes part of a community only when someone cares enough to carry it beyond the page.

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust

Auckland, New Zealand

A Call for Volunteers — The Merry Wives of Windsor

Some plays ask an audience to watch from a respectful distance. The Merry Wives of Windsor is not one of them.

It is a play built for company — for gossiping neighbours, jealous husbands, quick-witted wives, and a fool of a knight who never quite learns his lesson. It survives not on a single soaring speech but on timing, mischief, and the collective energy of a full stage. In other words, it is a play that needs people. This is precisely why we are writing to you.

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust has now grown to forty volunteers, a number that would have seemed almost unimaginable when this work began with a handful of people and a shared conviction that literature belongs in community, not only in classrooms and books. Some of you have been reading, teaching, translating, organising and performing with us since the very beginning. Others are only just discovering us. All of you are the reason a small idea has become an actual, functioning creative community.

Our next project asks something further of that community. We are forming a group to learn, rehearse and perform The Merry Wives of Windsor, one of Shakespeare's most sociable and good-humoured comedies. A number of volunteers have already stepped forward, and we are delighted by their enthusiasm. But a comedy of this kind does not come alive with a small cast reading quietly to itself; it needs wives, husbands, servants, suitors, fools, and the general noise of Windsor life. We still need more of you to join us.

Full details — schedule, roles, and rehearsal arrangements — are posted on our volunteers' Google Classroom. Anyone interested should look there first, and reach out to us with any questions.

We want to say one further word about why this matters, beyond the pleasure of the play itself.

Volunteering with us is rarely only about the task directly in front of you. Someone who reads a scene aloud this year may be leading a children's drama class in two years. Someone who helps backstage today may be the steady presence a nervous ten-year-old looks to on their first day of rehearsal next season. The Trust's future work with children and young people — the very reason this organisation exists — depends on adults who have themselves stood on a stage, stumbled over a line, laughed at their own mistake, and kept going. That kind of confidence cannot be taught in a single training session. It can only be lived.

So when you join The Merry Wives of Windsor, you are not only filling a role in a comedy. You are building the patience, ease, and understanding of performance that will one day let you stand in front of a room of children and say, with real authority, “I know what this feels like. Let's try it together.”

If you have ever wondered whether there might be a place for you in our next production, there almost certainly is. Windsor has always had room for one more.

The Shakespeare Cultural & Education Trust

Auckland, New Zealand