On May 19th a group of 74 Kaiapoi High School students performed our 8 minute piece in the annual Stage Challenge Competition at Horncastle Arena.  

This year our theme was based on the issues that families struggle with ‘Behind Closed Doors’. We wanted to look past the ‘perfect pictures’ we sometimes present to the world and deal with the underlying pressures we face. Our story follows a family trying to deal with a son accepting his sexuality, a mother overwhelmed by depression, a father trying to protect his family from a harsh world and a daughter reaching out for help.

All our performers, backstage and support crew performed to their best potential and we had many responses and comments praising our skilled, emotional and mature choreography and performance. We did win the Award of Excellence for Social Awareness, along with Awards of Excellence for CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE SKILL, DRAMA, SET DESIGN & FUNCTION, VISUAL ENHANCEMENT and COSTUMING CHARACTER. This year we had four choreographers who created varied and emotive choreographies so congratulations to Erica Van Meer, George Jacobs-Lawson, Mitch O’Hara and Laura Berg.

A big thank you to the people of the Kaiapoi High community that supported our performance and MENZSHED for generously building our awesome set! Congratulations to everyone that got involved with this amazing opportunity and to the senior leaders of our performers and crew. You were an absolute pleasure to work with and you should all be proud of what we accomplished and the way that your commitment and effort was realised after seeing our special concept come to life.