Imagine being thrust onto a stage in front of an expectant audience. Then imagine being asked to perform a scene from scratch there and then. For many, that would seem like an insurmountable task, but for the Senior Theatresports team, it was a day filled with laughter.

On the 26th of August, the Senior Theatresports team went to the Nasda theatre at Ara to compete in their first heat. The team, consisting of Romek Gall, Pawel Gall, Jacob Brown, Cormac Gallagher and Daniel Fogarty were all there early in anticipation of the competition. In our heat we came up against St Bede’s, Catholic Cathedral College and Linwood High in a four-way clash all vying for a spot in the semis. The competition was close and despite our early lead we were tied with St Bede’s when it came time to do our final scene. We managed to just win out over St Bede’s by one point with a thrilling underdog story about a nervous boxer. With the heat win under our belt, we moved onto the semis.

The semis were only a few hours later and the competition was looking much tougher - th Hagley, Cashmere and last year’s winners, Papanui. We were off to a strong start, but when we were next up to the plate, we couldn’t quite step it up. We ended up losing out to Papanui and Hagley who would move onto the finals against the Nelson team, a Dunedin team, the wildcard team and the scratch team.

Our spirits were down, but our hopes were not. There was still a chance we could make the finals if we made the wildcard team. And as luck would have it, you can watch us perform in the finals on the 23rd of September, as the wildcard.

But we wouldn’t have made it without a few people who helped us along the way. To Mrs Gaffaney, a very special thank you for taking the time to put up with us and helping us to be the men we are today, and to the previous seniors who helped to mentor and show us the fun in improvisation.