THEATRICAL pupils had just 24 hours to stage and star in a pantomime mad dash at John Ruskin School, Coniston.

The student production of Cinderella involved every single member of the school’s Year 10 group and, in true pantomime style, put a boy in drag to play the lead role.

Head teacher Miriam Bailey said: “The students did every-thing from marketing, prod-ucing to scriptwriting and learned about the whole proc-ess of staging an event. It was very successful and everyone who saw it really enjoyed it.”

South Lakeland education organisation Reality Bites Learning worked with the pupils, guiding them through the process of producing the panto.

John Maddy, of Reality Bites, said: “It is a massive undertaking. It can take a school months to put on a performance so for us to create one from scratch shows a huge amount of hard work has gone into it. The pupils were great and really ready to have a go at anything.”

Year 10 pupil Eddie Rimmer took the part of Cinders with the ‘cruel’ sisters and fairy godmother taken by girls.

An alternate ending also saw the handsome prince run off with an old lady as Cinders’ shoe would only fit her foot.

Mrs Bailey said: “Reality Bites set the students off on how to structure their work-force and then the rest was up to them,” said Mrs Bailey. “It’s a great thing for the pupils to do. They absolutely love it and it improves every-thing from communication skills to to teamwork and independent thinking.”

The pantomime project links the National Curri-culum subjects of Citizenship and Personal Social and Health Eduction and helps pupils learn more about lead-ership, communication, team-work and problem solving.

This is the fifth year John Ruskin School have worked with Reality Bites to create a school production.