Many months and many, many hours were spent casting, conceiving of, rehearsing and then performing our production. Even through several lockdowns, we were able to create a show worthy of an audience.

The cast from grades 5/6 spent many hours learning lines, songs, working on characters, and then during lockdown we spent many more hours rehearsing and working hard to transform a live theatre show into a film.

I wanted to give the students a live theatre experience so the final take that you see here, is in fact, filmed as one continuous performance that reflects the qualities of live theatre, improvisation, live singing and ensuring that the actors know their cues! You will notice some fuzzy internet connections and delays which were a constant challenge for us, some actors couldn't make filming because of technical glitches and so our superb understudies stepped in. We could only have one person at a time sing and speak which also affected our sound recording. I hope you enjoy all the children who were part of the ensembles. The preps had an especially good time preparing for their first production at St Anthony's!

The superb Technical Team (7 children from grades 5/6) did a great job of adding visual effects and layering the music to go with the performance. It might not always sound right, but that is the nature of such a project and I feel very proud of how much all the children involved achieved with this film. I call this the imperfect perfect!

And a huge thank you to the staff at St Anthony's who in so many ways, big and small supported this project and made it come to life!

I hope you enjoy it.

Ms Victoria Gelberg

Performing Arts Teacher and Director of Moana Jr