Cats coming to town

By Susan Sandys November 1 2011

Christchurch's loss will be Mid Canterbury's gain this week when Cats stages at the Ashburton Trust Event Centre.

National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art (NASDA) students are performing the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber production in five shows from Thursday to Sunday.
NASDA is based at CPIT in Christchurch.
CatsTM Final-year students in the three-year degree course usually stage their annual production in the city, but could not this year due to venues being earthquake damaged.
Assistant director Angela Johnson said because the show was coming to Ashburton, it was decided to include year one and two students as well.
The event centre was a fantastic venue, and she hoped both Mid Canterbury and Christchurch people would make up audiences.
"We have had to come to Ashburton, it's a huge thing, but a wonderful thing," Ms Johnson said.
Among those in the cast is former Mount Hutt College pupil, 21-year-old Megan O'Reilly.
The third-year pupil will play the young and beautiful "white kitten", Victoria.
Miss O'Reilly said she was excited about being in the show, especially on home turf.
She said she was pursuing her passion of performing by studying at NASDA, but had only come to love dancing, singing and acting in her senior years at high school.
She had undertaken extra-curricular drama classes while at primary school, and two years of Irish dancing as a young teenager, but these had had little impact.
It was only in later years, when she joined Jo Castelow's Mid Canterbury summer singing school and performed in a Mount Hutt College senior play, that her passion for performing clicked.
"I thought, oh, that's cool," Miss O'Reilly said.
She said having to keep up with fellow performers who had learned to dance as young children had been challenging to start with.
"It's okay, it just takes a little bit longer," she said.