Girls Grammar’s musical has been growing in leaps and bounds over the past four years, and our production of Shrek this year was our biggest yet. Not only did we perform our first full-length musical, but our cast and crew have grown to 50 students, spanning Years 5 - 12.
The audition process started with signing up and preparing a song if you wanted a place in the chorus, and a song and monologue if you wanted a lead. Anyone who showed up for an audition was automatically in the show and this year we even had to do call-backs to decide the roles of Donkey and Lord Farquaad. The auditions progressed quickly, and we soon started our first rehearsals, every Thursday and Sunday afternoon. Camp is one of our favourite weekends for the musical where we all bunk together in McKeague and spend three days in intensive musical rehearsals. This weekend is always when the show truly comes together, with full costume run-throughs for the first time. Then we arrived at tech week, which is easily one of the craziest weeks for someone involved in a musical, with rehearsals until 6.00pm every night after school. During this week, we set up all the lighting and mics, made sure all the music was working, and that all the technical elements in the show ran smoothly. This all led up to our spectacular opening night, with lights, costumes, ballads, dancing, and jokes, all culminating in a highly entertaining show. We sold out all four shows we performed, a feat well deserving of such a hardworking cast and crew.
With memorable characters and laughs galore, our cast had a fantastic time portraying the story of Shrek. Our cast was led by Claudia Heffer, who portrayed the title character Shrek. She should be credited for her emotive and captivating performance, helping us understand all the different layers ogres have, just like onions. Cadence Wone De Rungs was a pitch-perfect Fiona, Maya Elkhishin brought us some incredible donkey charm and Carrie shone in her specially crafted dragon costume. Hannah Rideout was our original Lord Farquaad who had an amazing and smutty performance but, due to COVID, she could not perform in the shows despite her hard work. Luckily Bethany Dey was an understudy ready to take on a huge role in just a week and we award her for her performance. Our dance company got to show off their hard work in several dance numbers and our fairy tale characters each got to embrace their chosen parts.
Shrek The Musical helps us embrace and celebrate our differences, teaching us to ‘let our freak flag fly’ and be proud of who we are. The comedy-filled show made for a highly memorable experience, with the cast smiling every time they left the hall. We will not forget the ‘Big Bright Beautiful World’ of Shrek The Musical.
Claudia Heffer (Shrek and Year 11 Student) and
Sophie Harwood (Musical Coordinator and Year 6 Teacher)
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