Junior Theatresports

2015 has been an exciting, challenging and fun year for Junior Theatresports. The team has been practising all year to compete in the final but before we even reached the final we had to win our heat. We had been working all year because as we were the returning champions, we thought the judges would have higher expectations of us.

The heat and final follow the same 3-round system. The first round otherwise known as the Blind Round has us pick a number which will select a random gam. For us it was Yes And Experts. In this game two people have to play as experts of a certain object suggested by the audience. In this case it was an eggplant. For the next two rounds, the 3 minute and the 4 minute round we got to choose our games. Actor Switch was our choice for the second round. In this game we play out a scene as normal but the MC (kind of like a referee) calls out “Switch” whenever he chooses and we all have to switch characters. For our final scene we did a Radio Play. As the name suggests it’s a play but done as if you were hearing it on a radio. We did win our heat by a comfortable margin and it was back to training for the final.

The day of the final arrived and we were all pumped and ready to go on the main stage at The Court Theatre. For the blind round we got Yes And Experts again – discussing the wheel. In the second round we chose Ding - a game where the MC calls “Ding!” and actors have to change what they just said – sometimes several times.

At the end of that round we were in the lead and in the final round played Actors’ Nightmare where one player can only read words off a random page in a script and the others have to justify what has been said and create a sensible story.

We didn’t end up winning. We came second, missing out on first by a single point, but it didn’t bother us as we had so much fun and a lot of laughs which you will always have whenever you do Theatre sports. Even though we train every day it never feels like something that has to be done. Five of the six team members now move into the senior competition but we are sure Cormac will be the star of a new junior team for 2016

Romek Gall

Senior Theatresports

As the year once again comes to an end it is time to look back at Theatresports for 2015. With every new year there are new students that join our small group and some that leave us too. Tim and Sam are out in the wider world although they have both taken the time to drop in on Friday afternoon and came along to the heat to support us. Unfortunately Charlie had too many other commitments this year so he also left the team.

But it has to be said that this year there was a large number of new exceptional young students who joined our group. Each week we focus on giving everyone the chance to come up with ideas and to lead a scene. Through these activities it has created a group of us that have all got to know each other well, regardless of age or interests.

When the competition came around for our senior team it was not as successful as we would have hoped. George Gibbs and Paddy Hansen joined the Senior team and enjoyed the “friendly” with Hornby and Unlimited as a warm up. We started off well in our heat against five of Christchurch's other great schools but the golden ticket to the finals was grasped away by another deserving school.

However, we realized that Theatresports is not simply about a competition. Theatresports is an activity that many of us commit to daily. It brings us together with great people and also gives us the opportunity to get up on stage and try and make people laugh and smile. For Alex, Josh and me who have been attending Theatresports since Year 7, it will be very sad to be leaving, but we are glad to be leaving the legacy of STC Theatresports in the deserving hands of many energetic junior students – and Mrs Gaffaney.

Joseph Hardman