Musical theatre is booming at Shailer Park State High, and director Justin Harreman hopes Grease will turn a successful revival into a lasting culture of creativity, confidence and belonging.
FOR Justin Harreman, musical theatre has always been about much more than putting on a show. It is about belonging.
Long before he was a senior Drama teacher at Shailer Park State High School, director and mentor, Harreman was a kid growing up in Beenleigh, equally comfortable around rugby league and rehearsal rooms.
When the school staged Legally Blonde in 2024, it was Shailer Park State High’s first musical in more than 25 years.
What followed was bigger than a successful production and it helped change the conversation around performing arts at the school.
“We got double the amount of auditionees for this one,” Harreman said.
“It’s incredible what something like that can do for a community,” he said.
Breaking Down The Barriers
Harreman understands better than most the stereotypes that can surround boys and performing arts.
He grew up playing rugby league in Beenleigh while simultaneously embracing musical theatre — two worlds that, particularly for young men, were often treated as though they could not coexist.
He never saw it that way.
“I grew up playing rugby league and Beenleigh was rough as guts,” he said.
“But I also had the musical side where my parents were into musical theatre.”
“Doing something like musical theatre just closes that gap and makes everyone realise that we’re all humans.
“We’re all wanting to have fun and get together and achieve something together.”
The Legacy
Ask Harreman about his legacy as a teacher and, initially, he hesitates.
He thinks about other professions and the tangible things people leave behind — the roads built, projects completed and structures standing long after the work is finished.
Then he thinks about his students.
“What am I providing for my people around me?” he said.
“And you sort of think about it for a while and you go, well, actually it’s the wellbeing of these kids.”
It is a realisation that hits him emotionally as Harreman remembers being their age and remembering what theatre gave him and how fortunate he was to have parents who introduced him to that world.
“I guess it is a legacy. I never really looked at it like that. But I am proud of it. I’m really glad that I get to do that and I have a sense of purpose in my job.”
Grease Is The Word
After bringing musicals back to Shailer Park with Legally Blonde, Harreman wanted to go bigger.
The answer was Grease.
“My mum and I used to sing a lot of the songs on the way to school in the car,” he said.
“The songs are fun and then the ballads are there if you’re feeling emotional.
“Grease is a go-to.”
It also presented exactly the challenge Harreman wanted, while Shailer Park already had a strong cohort of female dancers and performers, recruiting and developing enough boys for the production meant starting almost from scratch.
“Let’s get enough boys to try and do this and get them involved and not make this a thing just for the girls,” he said.
“I wanted to build a more boy-based arts opportunity.”
For Harreman, however, the final measure of success will not be the size of the set, the quality of the microphones or even whether every dance step lands perfectly.
It will come after the curtain falls.
He will be where he usually is — at the back of the theatre, making sure everything runs as it should.
And when asked to finish one simple sentence — the arts matter because… — Harreman perhaps sums up the entire journey better than anyone else could.
“Where else are we going to be able to express ourselves honestly?”
Grease runs Friday 16 and Saturday 17 of October at KP Centre, Shailer Park with tickets available at https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1603266.
