Road to the Globe

Tēnā koutou katoa, my name is Māhanga Mitchell and in July 2022 I have the opportunity to represent Aotearoa as a part of Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand (SGCNZ) Young Shakespeare Company (YSC) and perform onstage at the Globe Theatre in London.

Me being a proud Ngāpuhi boy from Hokianga, this is the biggest opportunity for me to establish myself in the acting community and develop my passion and dream of becoming a professional actor. The major dilemma I’m faced with to fulfil this opportunity is funds! As a student with only a part-time job, I’m going to need every bit of help I can get. With the trip costing over $9,500, I'm setting up this Givealittle page to help make this dream a reality. I would really appreciate it if you could give a little or a lot because every dollar donated gets me one step closer to London.

My journey to being a member of SGCNZ YSC began in the Drama classroom at Whangārei Boys’ High School. Our teacher, Fiona Churcher, told us about Shakespeare regionals for Te Tai Tokerau which were being held up the road in Kamo. What developed between my year 13 class and teacher was a fresh and dark take on Act 4, Scene 1 from Macbeth. After hours of painstaking devising and strenuous rehearsal, we created a highly detailed piece that secured our group the top spot in the 15 minute section. Giving us the opportunity to represent Te Tai Tokerau at the National Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival in the capital city, Wellington.

Once our spot was secured to go to Wellington, we went back to the drawing board to further sharpen our scene. With the help of Stuart Devinie we were able to include new components and further build on ideas we already had. With our scene elevated to another level, we were ready to take it to the National stage in front of the best groups in NZ. Watching our competitors perform was an incredible experience, but after every group we were losing hope in our scene and were second guessing ourselves whether we were going to make the cut. We had to remind ourselves that we went to Wellington with one goal, and that was to perform to the best of our ability. If we performed well, then we had done our job and that's exactly what we did. What came next was unexpected for our entire group, as we were absolutely shocked to be given 8 awards at prize giving - breaking the record for the most awards ever won by a single school. I myself took home the award for “The Most Extraordinary Performance” and was humbled by praise received from other performers and teachers. After Nationals I received a call from Dawn Sanders to be a part of the National Shakespeare School Production where the top performers from nationals gather and perform in the capital city as National Representatives.

Being selected for NSSP was an incredible experience. We were split into 3 groups and were each given a 30 page script to learn in 5 days, ready to perform on day 6 and 7. What came from this tight time schedule were 16 hour days jam-packed with gruelling rehearsals where directors stripped the script to the bone, intense workshops that got our muscles moving and our minds thinking, and activities that kept us on our toes and stayed relevant to the kaupapa. Expectations were high and when we were rehearsing on stage you had to know your stuff, so everybody had a script in hand the entire week learning lines every spare second we had. This was not just a week of performing but majorly a week of learning. Through intense work, there was incredible growth in my own and everybody's performance skills. Being Shakespeare we were able to take our own spin on the script and I myself took a cultural approach, translating the Welsh dialogue in my group's script to Te Reo Māori and paraphrasing all references of Welsh mythology to fit a Māori mythological context. Performances to the public were amazing the first day with no errors but still room for improvement in energy. On the second performance, we did just that and brought our piece to a higher standard. I performed to the best of my ability and had my fingers crossed that I had done enough to make it into YSC.

Now here I am, a member of the Young Shakespeare Company, ready to take my performance skills to a global stage and all I need to fulfil this opportunity is to accumulate funding to cover my fees for the trip. So, if you read to the bottom of this essay I please ask you to donate something to help me in my ‘Road to the Globe’.

Tēnā koutou katoa.