School's queens of stage celebrate win

Rotorua Girls' High School students show their joy after winning the 2015 Stage Challenge competition.

Rotorua Girls' High School students were crowned queens of the stage after placing first overall at Stage Challenge and winning 11 other awards.

The girls gave their school its first win at the event in seven years.

Nine schools took to the stage at the Rotorua Civic Theatre on Tuesday evening with a wide variety of themes, set designs and choreography.

Rotorua Girls' High School's winning performance, Inspired by Change, was closely followed by performances from Taupo Nui-A-Tia in second place, and Western Heights High School, third.

Three of the Rotorua Girls' High School Stage Challenge leaders, Clelland Harper, 18, Nathalie Macfarlane, 17, and Victoria Thompson, 17, agreed the win "felt surreal" and was still sinking in.

"It has been crazy. It's hard to explain how we're feeling because it still doesn't feel real to us," Nathalie said.

"Since we've been at [Rotorua Girls' High School], we have never won Stage Challenge so to know that it was our theme, choreography, costumes and set that got us first place is such an awesome feeling," Clelland said.

Rotorua Girls' High School's Stage Challenge theme stemmed from feminism and was developed to focus on significant female leaders in New Zealand history and the social changes they influenced.

As part of the group's opening speech, Victoria Thompson said, "during times of savagery, innovation, suppression and protest, there have always been women who have shone their own light and appeared from the shadow cast by man.

"The wahine we represent are strong leaders who have inspired revolution and changed the hearts and minds of men and women, through some of the most haunting and unforgettable events in New Zealand's history."

Event manager Sarah-Jane Phillips said Rotorua Girls' High School produced an "exceptional performance, with tight choreography".

"They delivered a strong, powerful message in an over-all moving performance."