Last week, Merrin School competed at the The Court Theatre's Junior Theatresports Competition at Rangi Ruru. The two teams, named Pak ‘n’ Save and Four Square by their year 7/8 members, competed against each other, Beckenham Primary School, and Riccarton High School.

First up was the blind round, where games are randomly selected on the teams' behalf. Pak ‘n’ Save were given the game 'Shared Story', where each person tells part of an ongoing story. The ideas we got from the audience were “tiger” and “ice cream”, so we ended up talking about a tiger who ran an ice cream shop! Four Square were given 'Yes, And Experts', where you pretend to be experts on a random subject. Nina and Gemma suddenly acquired a PhD in lamps!

Next was the choice round where you get to pick the game you play. Pak ‘n’ Save chose to play 'Half Life', where you do a scene in 2 minutes. You then repeat the scene in 1 minute, then 30 seconds, then 15 seconds and so on. The plot centered on Ollie being attacked by a feral cat, and quickly dissolved into hissing, screaming, and bellowing as the time got shorter and shorter!

Four Square got the offers of “McDonald’s” and “ketchup”, and chose to play 'Time Jump', where the MC jumps in every twenty seconds or so and tells you to jump forwards or backwards in time. What we learned: don’t eat McDonald’s ketchup, as it’s apparently full of cockroaches!

After the choice round, we performed in the challenge round. In this round, a competing team gives you an offer to work with. In turn, your team gives another team an offer. Pak ‘n’ Save received the offer of “crochet”, so we decided to do a 'Yearbook' scene, where you pretend to be four members of a club. Suddenly, we were all experts on crochet!

Overall, even though Merrin didn’t get into the finals, we all had so much fun acting and performing on stage! The Theatresports teams are looking forward to performing at Gala Night for everybody in the Merrin School community :)

Written by Ava Heath Williams