Most school drama programs stage a play. At The McDonald College, students are prepared for the professional stage, and the difference shows up not just in the productions themselves, but in the opportunities that follow.
Across both the Junior (Years 7–9) and Senior (Years 10–12) Acting Streams, this year’s season comprised three Australian plays, each demanding something different and each delivered with real commitment. While many schools fit drama into a timetable, McDonald College students spend two dedicated hours every day in their chosen performing arts discipline, whether that’s acting, music, dance, ballet, musical theatre, or technical production, alongside a full academic curriculum. That daily immersion doesn’t just build technique. It builds the kind of ensemble chemistry, stamina and artistic maturity that makes genuinely ambitious work possible, and it shows in the quality of what ends up on stage.
This year, that ambition was on full display across three productions that reflect what sets this school apart from the rest.
The Senior Stream opened with Grace Chapple’s Never Closer, directed by Romy Bartz. A darkly funny, emotionally charged work set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, it follows five childhood friends reunited on Christmas Eve a decade after the years that shaped them. The production had only just finished its run at upstairs Belvoir before the College secured the rights, the kind of contemporary, living work that most school programs wouldn’t attempt, Northern Irish dialect and all. “The challenge has been joyous and has only strengthened the ensemble as a whole,” says Bartz.
Next, Head of Acting Greg Friend directed the Senior Stream in Michael Gow’s Away, set across the summer of 1967 and following three families through very different experiences of love, loss and forgiveness. The production drew on a costume department with more than 5,000 pieces, built a sweeping seaside set with drapes that rippled like ocean waves, and soundtracked each scene with classic 60s hits. Friend’s focus was on what the script demands beneath the surface. “The challenge for our senior actors was to find nuance and depth with the older characters while still capturing the fun and torment in Gow’s beautifully crafted script,” he says.
The Junior Stream took on Lachlan Philpott’s Bustown, directed by Bartz. Philpott is no emerging voice, with his play Truck Stop having opened at La Comédie-Française in Paris earlier this year to a sold-out season, and Bustown is no easy assignment for a junior cast. A post-apocalyptic dreamscape built from junk, where a community clings to ritual and waits for a saviour who may never arrive, it demanded a great deal physically and emotionally from students who met the challenge with everything they had. “This production has been shaped by the immense vulnerability and courage of its cast,” says Bartz. “They have embraced the fractured language, the ritualised movement, and the absurdism.”
Philpott attended a performance and stayed afterwards to speak directly with the students, a rare and meaningful encounter with a working playwright that very few school programs can offer. It’s also not unusual for industry professionals and talent agencies to attend McDonald College productions, with students regularly being noticed and, in some cases, approached.
When you train for two hours every day, the work speaks for itself.
To find out more about The McDonald College, visit mcdonald.nsw.edu.au
Truly the only school of its kind in Australia. The The McDonald College is a K-12 school in North Strathfield […]