After months of hard work, Ashburton College’s Stage Challenge team has been rewarded with a haul of awards and titles.

The school was the Christchurch Stage Challenge winners of the open division for 2017.

Along with the main prize, the school collected 10 awards of excellence and the “spirit of stage challenge award”.

The school’s narrative was titled One Small Boy, and explored the idea of the power of social media to transform worldwide thinking.

Centered around the Syrian refugee crisis, Ashburton College teacher Claire Bubb said the narrative explored how the one image of a young Syrian refugee who had drowned, and washed up on a beach in Turkey, had been a catalyst for worldwide attention on the issue.

Given eight minutes to perform the narrative, and not able to make any sound from on the stage, the students delivered the piece in three major scenes.

“In the first scene it was the little boy on the beach, then it went in to full on war with soldiers and explosions before a scene in the lifeboat on a sea of students representing the ocean, before the boy goes overboard and is dragged down and drowned by the ocean,” said Bubb.

“The students then came and took photos which were sent all over the world, and the final scene was of a refugee camp, showing refugees with hope and building a future.

“As they weren’t allowed to make noise on the stage, we used voiceovers and news reports about the little boy which was very powerful.”

The judges’ comments of the performance described it as “confronting, visually stunning and powerful”, and left one judge crying throughout.

A 90-student strong team made the trip to the Horncastle Arena at 7am on Friday, with the group not returning until 1am on Saturday morning.

“The performance was purely student directed, choreographed and produced,” said Bubb.

“It was amazing and had a huge effect on the audience.

“I am really proud of the students for having the bravery to delve into something so hard-hitting.”

Bubb said many students described it as the best day ever.

The students had 30 minutes on stage to prepare, before spending the rest of the day in “production meetings”, socialising with 1500 other students.

“It was a fantastic experience, the whole thing, creating it and then seeing it come to life,” she said.

By Jaime Pitt-MacKay © The Ashburton Guardian - 22 May 2017