Seeking Stage Challenge saviours
Iam fast developing an educational theory that says that anything dull, conventional and of little educational value that goes on in schools is immediately championed by education authorities and some parents. At the same time, anything fun, risky and truly educational is soon closed down.
During my own ill-illustrious school-writing career I pleased my teachers with pretentious essays (the role of poison in Hamlet, for goodness sake) and by winning the odd speech competition. But publishing the school student magazine was where the real fun, and education, lay. When you are only 16 and certain teachers threaten to resign over something you have written, then you realise that you could make an entire career out of pissing people off.
Then there were school productions. At only 13 I put the Caucasian into The Caucasian Chalk Circle, managing to stuff up my one line (‘but Azdak told us to come’) night after night. For me, English and Maths were things you did in between the real education of bands, sport, orchestras, debates, school councils, socials and other exciting stuff.
Being born in the late Mesozoic meant that I was too old to ever have been involved in Stage Challenge. However, years ago my wife, a theatre marketer, was asked to judge a regional final. She loved it, with tales of hundreds of teenagers performing work they’d devised themselves. Even though the slick, high-decile inner city schools walked away with the prizes, it was the smaller schools from rural areas that stole her heart.
Recently I attended a Stage Challenge show at the cavernous Queen’s Wharf Events Centre. OK, so the acoustics were worse than a public toilet but it didn’t matter. Both the participants and huge audience were having a ball and I witnessed some exceptional performances.
Not that every Stage Challenge act was a triumph. In a 1920s homage to the Prohibition Era, spotty boys from Wadestown transformed into machine-gun toting pimps while cheerful teenage girls from Karori suddenly looked like extras from Pretty Baby.
Then there are the more experimental Stage Challenge acts. Leotards and headbands are donned and someone called Low Self-Esteem prances around a circle of Peer Pressure.
Meanwhile Troubled Adolescence (usually not troubled and with Grade 8 ballet) and Addiction (a prop forward doing Stage Challenge to meet girls) tempt Innocence and Independence (twins) who eventually, and literally, triumph against Adversity (the head prefect).
What’s great about Stage Challenge is that it develops skills not used elsewhere. Students who might not be academic or sporting might find that they are really good at dancing, making costumes, compiling a soundtrack or choreography.
Does Stage Challenge have any lasting educational value? Believe me, if you can successfully choreograph 120 of your peers to perform your work, then heading a corporate organisation of over 400 people in 20 years time will be a piece of cake. And if you’re one of those 120 students, what better way to learn how to be part of a team?
However, due to Financial Pressure, Low Ticket Sales and Sagging Sponsorship (imagine the costume), Stage Challenge has been canned.
Though teachers have vowed to continue it in some form and Education Minister Chris Hipkins has pledged that the present level of government funding will continue, more money needs to be found.
It seems that the private sector has gone off to support the First Fifteen, so where will the money come from? Could our local bodies look at contributing?
If our council can subsidise the Edinburgh Tattoo, WoW and the Sevens, why not Stage Challenge? Where do they think future WoW performers are going to come from?
If ratepayer-funded WREDA and Venues Wellington can invest in bringing British TV presenter Neil Oliver to Wellington, as they did last week, surely they could offer Stage Challenge the use of their facilities for free?
I sincerely hope Stage Challenge survives. It seems trying to get sponsorship from the business community is impossible, so perhaps we should remind our politicians, local and national, that they might like to resist Peer Pressure from Neo-Liberal Forces and Venues That Charge Locals an Arm and a Leg and pirouette in to play Stage Challenge Saviour.