The cast, crew and musicians of “Shrek the Musical” at Woodbridge High continued their annual tradition of staging a professional-level performance for students, teachers and families.
Musical director Cassandra Gaona initiated the production process in early October, holding auditions and casting the roles. For each role, Gaona searched for someone who was confident and could capture the audience’s attention and surprise them.
Once the actors were chosen, they had to learn how to bring the story to life on stage.
Junior Bennett Fillmore who played Shrek in the musical went through his own journey to memorize his lines and develop his character. He learned how to do a Scottish accent and even studied the “Shrek” movies to learn how to imitate Shrek’s demeanor.
“I [needed to] figure out how to take this ogre who hates the world and everyone hates him to this person who is emotionally open…and that it’s okay to let your boundaries down sometimes,” Fillmore said.
In addition to memorizing his lines, senior Finn Allred who played Lord Farquaad—a character notably short in stature—faced unique challenges in bringing his role to life.
“Being in character hasn’t been too difficult. I think it’s sort of just like [Farquaad is]…a very free role so…it’s just my personality [that] plays into that,” Allred said.
In addition to creating a personality for Lord Farquaad on stage, he also had to learn how to sing and dance on his knees.
“Singing on my knees…there’s not a lot of lung support when you’re that low and so it’s hard to hit those higher notes and sing strongly,” Allred said.
While doing everything on his knees was a challenge, it allowed Allred to take the more serious version of Lord Farquaad and make him more comical.
Junior Yuki Matsumura, who was one of the Three Blind Mice, faced a new feat as this was her first time performing in a musical.
She had to build her endurance by working on her breath support while singing as she learned her dance choreography. For example, in the song “Make a Move,” she and the other Blind Mice practiced both the choreography and being able to project without running out of breath for their three-part harmony.
For some of these actors, physically portraying their character was also a big challenge. As “Shrek” is an imaginative animation, its artistic character design was difficult to replicate in a real-world musical.

Being Shrek proved to be a challenge for Fillmore because of the costume and makeup. His costume did not have a lot of ventilation, making the suit fairly stuffy for the duration of the musical. Then, after a long day of rehearsal, he had to take off all the green paint that was part of his costume.
The enjoyable moments that took place during the creation of the musical, helped the actors, director and technicians work through their challenges.
Fillmore, Allred and Matsumura agree that the easiest thing about putting on the musical was working with their fellow cast members and everyone else involved in the musical.
“I love working with everyone in the theater department. Everyone is super encouraging so it’s like if you mess up or you’re not having the best day, everyone’s always there for you and it’s a really good community,” Fillmore said. “They are all amazing.”
Having such a cohesive group was especially helpful for Gaona. The students provided their insight on the different scenes which helped with the creative flow of ideas necessary to put on a polished, professional high school production.
Each student had their own work to do in preparation for the musical, but they eventually all came together to produce “Shrek the Musical.”
“The students come halfway [through the planning process]. They come halfway and we come together with some amazing products,” Gaona said. “Their work ethic has helped a lot in this show.”
All the students worked diligently and did their part to help keep the production of the musical running on schedule, but everyone encountered some difficulties along the way.
For Gaona, the hardest thing was finding solutions for unexpected problems. She consistently had to work with the students to pivot from one plan to another when they realized that something did not work, including going through multiple different backgrounds and props with the technicians.
Another one of these difficulties has been the demanding rehearsal schedule, which students had to work around to be able to prepare for their roles while balancing their academics and other extracurriculars.
“The hardest thing about putting on the musical has been the time commitment and the long rehearsals,” Matsumura said. “As we get closer to opening night, we have rehearsals almost every day after school until 8 p.m.”
Through all these ups and downs, everyone kept the end goal in mind: opening night and all the other performances that would follow. As they looked forward to opening night, each member on the production team had something they were excited for.
Allred and Fillmore were excited to see the reactions of everyone who comes to watch the musical, to take them on a journey and to introduce them to a new version of “Shrek” as not many people have had a chance to see the musical version.
As opening night approached, they were most excited to hear the roar of the audience after each song and every successful performance.
The final product brought lots of anticipation for everyone involved.
“I am most excited to see many different elements brought together, such as the costumes, orchestra and the lights,” Matsumura said.
“We have a story to tell [that] everyone is accepted. We all go on a journey to try to find that acceptance,” Gaona said. “This is who I am. And we’re going to celebrate that. And that’s what Woodridge [High] does well.”
Thinking back to past opening nights, Gaona loved hearing families say that the musical didn’t feel like a high school production but instead felt like something they would see in a professional theater.
“We’re going to do it again.
We’re going to show them again. We’re going to make them disappear from reality for two hours,” Gaona said. “We’re going to celebrate how amazing our musicians, our technicians, our performers, they all step to this caliber and the community comes back every year for more.”

Through this entire experience, Gaona has kept one goal in mind: to make sure the students are telling their own story. She always asks herself: What do they have to say about the story of “Shrek?”
This goal allowed Gaona and the “Shrek the Musical” cast and crew to create a spectacular night for the audience who came to see the show.