Tauranga Musical Theatre’s youth team dazzled the adjudicators at the Junior Theatre Festival in Tāmaki Makaurau over the weekend.
The Junior Theatre Festival is the world’s biggest celebration of young people performing musical theatre, bringing together student troupes from all over the world for a weekend of “musical theatre mayhem and madness”. The Auckland event hosted musical theatre tutors from Broadway and the West End, who provided practical workshops for teachers and students in all aspects of musical theatre performance.
Student groups each performed ten minutes from a musical, adjudicated by industry professionals. Fifty students were permitted on stage at the same time; while most troupes performed in groups of around 30, Tauranga Musical Theatre’s youth team (coached by Hannah Lee, Tayla Skudder and Millie Rowe) performed with six, and took away the Musical Theatre International Spirit Award for family, community, kindness and spirit.
TMT Youth’s Scarlett Waterhouse (also performing in Wright Rohde Theatre‘s season of Elf at 16th Ave Theatre this weekend) received one of six individual awards for top performance across the entire festival, and was selected from hundreds of children from across Aotearoa.
An All Stars group was formed from a selection of performers to close the awards ceremony. Three Tauranga youth were selected – Scarlett Waterhouse, Rhys Hopcroft, and Maia Solomona – and the group sang Frozen’s Let It Go, complete with beautiful harmonies.
Congratulations to the Tauranga youth putting our town on the map for musical theatre performance! You can click here to learn more about TMT’s youth programme.
