Westlake Boys’ High School

Fun and fundraising at annual K-Night

The combined Westlake Boys & Girls Korean Night was the place to be on Friday 3rd June, with more than 1500 audience members enjoying a lively and exciting cultural evening!

K-Night concert-goers enjoyed a wonderful mixture of traditional and modern Korean performances, from Fan dance, Nanta drumming, and Mask and Doll dance, to Taekwondo, Samulnori and the popular K-pop bands. The audience supported and cheered passionately, creating an inspiring atmosphere for the night and an unforgettable experience for performers onstage.

This highly anticipated event has been held annually for the past 11 years, and each year profits are donated to a charity. This year, $2022 was donated to Youthline on behalf of Westlake Korean Night 2022.

Cross Country Success

Following on from a strong performance at the Auckland Secondary Schools Cross Country Champs where the team won five of the six team titles the Westlake Cross Country team headed to Nelson in June for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Association Cross Country Championships.

The 42-strong squad – the largest contingent from around the country did not disappoint and the team came away with five gold, two silver, and one bronze medal.

Alfie Steedman won individual gold in the Junior Boys’ race with Cameron Maunder picking up a bronze in the Senior Boys’ race. Other top 10 performances came from Juniors Max Tuttle (fifth), Jamie Maunder (ninth), and Year 9 Leo Wright (ninth).

In the team events, Westlake placed first or second in all the boys’ team events. Seniors Jett Curteis, Nick Davies, Etienne Calonne, Roman Matson and Harrison Loretz combined to take the senior sixperson team gold medal, a race the Westlake team is undefeated in since June 2019.

Other gold medal team performances came from the Year 9 six-person team consisting of Leo Wright, Lorenzo Ferguson, Connor Smith, Leo Hobson, Aiden Schuin and Henry Barr and the Junior Boys three- and six-person team of Alfie Steedman, Max Tuttle, Jamie Maunder, Charley Mueller, Keegan Burgess and Josh Glackin. Cameron Maunder and Alfie Steedman were named in the NZSSAA team to travel to Australia in late August.

Laughter and tears to cleanse the soul

Over the course of two weeks, from June 29th–July 9th, the Westlake Boys auditorium was the setting for not just one production, but two this year! With Covid red light settings restricting rehearsals at the beginning of this year, Westlake Boys’ Head of Drama Dr Nick Brown, and Westlake Girls Head of Senior English MJ Millburn, came up with the novel idea of each school rehearsing and producing a play separately, and then running a two-week show season, alternating comedy and tragedy on each night.

Government Inspector, performed entirely by Westlake Boys students, is a classic farce, by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. The play focuses on a group of corrupt bureaucrats in provincial Russia, who learn of the imminent arrival of a government inspector from St Petersburg, as Russia quivers on the brink of war. Unbeknownst to them, the man they believe to be the inspector – Khlestakov – is in fact a minor civil servant who proves all too willing to take advantage of their ineptitude and corruption. Confusion, manipulation, bribery, romance, and chaos ensue in this high-energy comic farce.

Antigone is a Greek tragedy, by Sophocles, and was performed entirely by Westlake Girls students. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, announces that anyone found performing funeral rites over the body of Polynices, the leader of an invading party, will be put to death. Antigone is arrested for doing just that because Polynices is her brother, and she argues that nothing, not even the law, can prevent her from treating him with love and dignity. Although the play is 2,500 years old, it still has much to teach us about equality, democracy, and religious tolerance. Audience noted the versatile use of the stage space to present two very different shows. The young casts handled the rich text of each script with maturity and deftness, delivering performances that ranged from vibrant and comedic, in the case of Government Inspector, to heartfelt and subtle, in the case of Antigone. According to audience members, the actors unfolded the story of the tragedy with “clarity and imagination”, whilst the team behind the comedy were lauded for their ability to transform themselves into such “witty and outrageous characters”.

Both casts and crews performed admirably under the pressures of Covid-related absences, with rehearsals and performances impacted to some extent. Each ensemble was confident and efficient in their craft, and managed absences and filled gaps in performances so skilfully that the audience were often unaware of the changes. Students are to be congratulated for their hard work and have thoroughly earned the break provided by the school holidays.