Home-grown stars of stage and screen
What do Lachlan Buchanan and Patrice Tipoki have in common? As well as being stars of screen and stage with the world at their feet, they’re both home-grown talents and former students of Matthew Flinders Anglican College.
Movies and musical theatre may be their playground today – but the first scenes of their extraordinary successes were played out during their high school musicals.
Run off a list of any of today’s most popular musicals and there’s a very good chance many of our current crop of stars took their first steps under the spotlight.
Little Shop of Horrors, The Birds, Sweet Charity, The Boyfriend, Calamity Jane, the list goes on. From 1992 to 2009, Matthew Flinders Anglican College has staged these show-stopping musical productions and many more.
In just its second year, the College presented Oh! What A Lovely War, which was directed by current English teacher Katrina Ridley. In contrast to today’s huge orchestral showcase, the music for the 1992 production was the simple piano accompaniment of Virginia Whittle.
In 2007 Flinders became the first school in South-East Queensland to perform Disney’s High School Musical, and to mark its 20th anniversary year, Flinders presented the classic Westside Story from May 21-23.
There is a strong tradition of performance at Flinders where outstanding Music and Drama departments nurture students’ talents. And as history show, Flinders is a place where talents are cultivated and where many of our established performers first “cut their teeth”.
The Past
Patrice Tipoki
Back in 1999, Patrice Tipoki, right, played the role of Charity in Flinders’ production of Sweet Charity. With Westside Story on the College's 2009 calendar, Patrice will take a step down memory lane - as a 15-year-old she also played the role of Maria in this tale of Romeo and Juliet set in New York City in the 1950s.
Patrice and her talented brother Kuki and older sister Laura all received music scholarships to Matthew Flinders, and it is hoped they will be able to attend 20th year anniversary celebrations this year.
After graduating from Flinders in 2000, Patrice studied musical theatre with the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, whose most famous graduate is Hugh Jackman. Patrice played the role of Nala in Disney’s The Lion King at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne and she has toured Australia and Japan in We Will Rock You, understudying and performing the lead roles of Killer Queen and Scaramouche on several occasions. Since July 2008 Patrice has been performing in the hit musical Wicked, often playing the lead role of Elphaba.
Lachlan Buchanan
A more recent Flinders graduate (2004), TV and movie star Lachlan Buchanan, pictured above, is living the life he has dreamed of for as long as he can remember. The 22-year-old, who had roles in Fracture, The Boyfriend and On The Fringe during his time at Flinders, always wanted to be an actor, and even his friends recall him talking about it as a youngster.
“Someone who I went to primary school with was talking to me the other day and said how funny it was that they remember me in Grade 4 saying I wanted to be an actor when I was older, and now I am actually doing it,” Lachlan once revealed. “I was like, 'Wow that's right'. I don't ever remember not wanting to be an actor.”
Lachlan has been carving his way through lead roles in film and TV for the past few years. His credits include Home and Away and Blue Water High, and the much acclaimed feature film, Newcastle, which tells the story of 17-year-old Jesse, who lives in the shadow of his older brother Victor's failure to become surfing's next big thing.
At the end of last year Lachlan wrapped up filming his first Hollywood feature film, Arcadia Lost, which gave him the opportunity to work with mega-star Nick Nolte. With a lucrative Hollywood career just around the corner, an agent in Sydney and an agent and manager in LA, Lachlan is living a blessed existence. But despite splitting most of his time between Sydney and LA, he still calls the Sunshine Coast home.
The Present and the Future
The current students involved in the 2009 musical, Westside Story, also have big ideas for the future and are working hard to realise their dreams of working professionally in their chosen fields.
Combining the talents of nearly 100 students on stage and in the orchestra, Westside Story, exploded onto the Nambour Civic Centre stage from May 21-23 with a four-performance season. The roles of Maria and Tony were beautifully played by Lauren Lodge-Campbell and Charles Sells, while Anita and Bernardo were brought to life by Aimee Liesegang and Jack Huntley.
Charles, a Year 11 student, hopes to find his way into theatre after he graduates from Flinders, while Aimee, who sings, dances and plays the piano and trumpet, hopes to follow in the footsteps of Patrice Tipoki and find herself on stage performing musical theatre when she graduates this year.
In the orchestra pit, Year 12 jazz saxophone sensation Jake Barden is aiming for big things on the music scene. He has just returned from a Singapore music festival where he played with world-renowned jazz artists.
Student review of Westside Story
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