Spending an hour exploring a play with young students for whom English is a second language was going to be tough. When the play is by a writer who died 400 years ago… well, that was going to be impossible. Surely. How wrong I was.

The energy, commitment and open minds with which the children from The Cotton Spinners School approached Shakespeare’s Macbeth that afternoon brought the play alive for me as never before.

What Shakespeare4All is achieving in Hong Kong shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s giving young people the confidence to stand up in front of and with their peers, collaborating in the common purpose of making theatre, helping them to unlock their imaginations and to conquer challenges of language and communication they might otherwise have considered beyond their reach.

It’s an invaluable initiative and I was delighted to spend some time with the students and mentors alike."