By Madeline Golliver, 2016

The Bishop Blanchet High School Drama Program performed Shrek, the Musical on May 30, May 31 and June 1, 2014.

“This year, because it’s late and at the very end of May, we’re going to have a lot more alumni come back and be able to see it, and I’m really excited about that,” Visual and Performing Arts Department Chair and Spring Musical Director Maureen “Mo” Mershon said. “It’s about a month later this year which is not normal.”

Mershon chooses a musical each year by looking at what the students have done for the past three years. She aims to have each four-year cycle include different types of musical theatre, but is limited to musicals which have available rights and royalties. This year, she found that the drama department hadn’t done anything fun or silly in a long time.

“And so it was time,” Mershon said, “and that was one thing I was looking at, for something really fun and really up. The second thing is that I know the talent pools that we have here, except for freshman coming in, and I know where that energy probably will do well in different shows.”

Planning began last summer, when Mershon and her technical team talked and walked through the show to see what was needed for sets, props, costuming and prosthetics to determine what the overall budget needed to be.

“My technical team teamed up on me when I told them that this is what I wanted to do, and they all said no…and Mr. Eriksen was just batting his head with the script. It is an incredible technical challenge for us,” Mershon said, “but I would never want to do it if I didn’t think that the team wasn’t up to doing it. We have very talented people that I knew could handle it. Is it going to be challenging? Absolutely. But I think it’s also going to be incredibly satisfying.”

The challenging aspects of Shrek include more than sets, lighting and direction; this show will require a great deal of effort from the Costume Crew and the Hair and Makeup Crew as well.

While Costume Crew does construct the costumes for the musical, they don’t design the costumes themselves. This year Greg Elder designed the costumes, and the crew began constructing them in January.

“The costumes for Shrek are interesting,” the adult head of Costume Crew Jeannie Wood-Elder said, “in that we will be using materials that are less traditional. We have to build a huge number of fat suits. We will also have a variety of pieces made out of fur, which makes a mess in the costume shop. Little fuzzy pieces get all over the place. And then there’s the latex issues. Everybody is going to learn, which is part of the fun of working in theatre. We never know what a script will require us to learn. It’s an adventure.”

Mershon enjoys the cleverness and humor in Shrek, but was surprised by the level of enthusiasm that the musical received when it was announced.

“I knew that people would be excited about this piece…. The music is so much fun, and there’s something really clever about the way the whole thing is put together,” Mershon said. “When this was announced the evening of Raise the Curtain, I have never seen such excitement in my life. And not just from the students, but from the parents. I think it’s because this piece in particular is iconic to (these students’) generation, to growing up. And so there is a connection to this piece that people have, that I wasn’t quite prepared for.”

 
Tickets were available for purchase in the Activities Office.