The Westland High School junior production, was a resounding success.

During the 1st term school holidays Westland High School staged a production of Annie Jr at the Regent Theatre. The cast and crew were drawn from a wide cross section of the community, including having all of the local primary schools represented in the cast and range of adult community members who assisted with set building, backstage, sound and lighting, publicity, and front of house. Personally, as a director, I’m always immensely proud of what our community achieves when we come together in productions like this and how it allows both our students, and the wider community, to live the school values of manaakitanga and whanaungatanga. We saw an amazing array of talent from the juniors on the stage and it makes me excited to think of what the future holds as these performers mature.

Our junior cast was joined by several senior students who proved to be excellent role models for our young performers. Kaedance, Resina and Sam presented outstanding performances in the roles they were cast and were a great advertisement to what students can aim to achieve in the performing arts at Westland High School. My co-director, year 13 student Kristyn Lang, was outstanding in the role and took on much of the responsibility of bringing this production to the stage. She to provides an excellent role model for students to aspire to in the performing arts at our school. I’d also like to mention the support provided by our production manager Kim Brough, and our choreographer Nicola Minehan—both gave up many hours of their time in order to make our production a success.

Over the course of the production over 600 audience members came to see our show, and I’d like to personally thank all of our community who supported us by attending our show and celebrating the hard work and dedication of our cast of performers. We hope to have your continued support for our larger community production, ‘Once Upon a Mattress’, later in the year.

• Tim Shawcross