SHREK, THE MUSICAL Begins This Month at Blackfriars Theatre

Join Blackfriars Theatre (795 East Main Street) to experience the family-friendly joy and hilarity of Shrek, the Musical, running July 25th – August 3rd!

Audiences looking for a kid-friendly laugh-fest with heart need look no further than Blackfriars Theatre this summer as they present Shrek, the Musical. Follow the unlikely hero Shrek as he embarks on a life-changing journey, accompanied by his loyal, wisecracking companion, Donkey, and the feisty, no-nonsense Princess Fiona. Together, they confront the short-tempered villain, Lord Farquaad, and over a dozen quirky fairy tale misfits to save the day and discover what true friendship and love really mean.

This production will be student-performed as the capstone to the 2025 Blackfriars Theatre Summer Intensive (BTSI) program, a professional summer training program for rising juniors in high school through recently-graduated college seniors. The BTSI program was started in 2016 by former Blackfriars artistic director, Danny Hoskins, and he has returned every year since to helm each production as director. “The challenge with bringing Shrek, The Musical to Blackfriars is how to take such an epic, brassy Broadway spectacle and place it into our unique and intimate space,” says Hoskins. “We've reimagined the piece as a story theatre production that takes place in a kindergarten setting, where everything we use to tell the story comes from this toddler-centric world. You'll be swept up into the story with multi-media video, live stream performances, and an array of puppetry and other silly devices. It will stay true to the fairytale world of Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona, but with the true Blackfriars stamp of creativity.”

This clever take on the beloved and well-known musical was the answer to challenges posed by a non-traditional “black box” performance space. According to Blackfriars artistic director, Brynn Tyszka, “When Danny first suggested Shrek, the Musical, we couldn't see a path to making it happen in our tiny theatre without backdrops and prosthetics. That said, BTSI is an educational program, and that challenge presented a chance to display high-level problem solving to our students—an essential tool for any theatre artist, even in the professional world. We knew how badly the BTSI students wanted to do this piece, and changing the context of the storytelling and using new devices to relay this beloved tale has been something they all saw the potential of and have embraced with gusto throughout the entire process!”

This production will serve as the “soft open” to Blackfriars' 76th season, which officially kicks off in September with Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins, by Stephen Temperley. Blackfriars Theatre provides an intimate theatre-going experience, with 126 seats in a wraparound configuration—audiences are never more than thirty feet from an actor on stage. Because of the limited seating, it is always recommended that patrons purchase their tickets early to ensure availability. Audiences can see Shrek, the Musical at Blackfriars Theatre from July 25th through August 3rd.

The Shrek cast includes Lauren Akerley (Gingy/Sugarplum Fairy), Sonni Amoroso (Shoemaker's Elf/ensemble), Caroline Bauer (Pig #3/ensemble), Charlotte Caplan (Ugly Ducking/ensemble), Mikey Champion (Pinocchio), Jacquelyn Conlon (Pig #2/ensemble), Fiona Culhane (Dragon), Viveka Frisk (Mama Bear/ensemble), Josh Hemmings (Donkey), Sawyer Herbst (Shrek), Gabe Lindsay (Pig. #1/ensemble), Aaliyah Nicholas (Wicked Witch/ensemble), Gabriel Pierce (Lord Farquaad), Genevieve Prinsen (Fiona), Anais Rivera (Teen Fiona/ensemble), James Ross (Big Bad Wolf/ensemble), Kaley Sumeriski (Peter Pan/ensemble), and Jalen Taylor (Papa Bear/ensemble). Directed by Danny Hoskins; Musically Directed by Sarah Staebell; Choreographed by Lani Toyama Hoskins.