In tradition, this fall Liberty High School will be performing a musical. The choice of musical will be Shrek. Shrek will be performed at The Little Theatre November 12 to November 15 at 7:00 and November 19 – November 21. The Musical will also be performed on November 22 at 2:00 and 7:00. To perform this large-scale musical, the theatre department needs to do a lot of work.

The first step to making this musical is finding talented students willing to give it their all for this production. This year around 200 students will be involved.

“They had two auditions, one was where we sang. Music was playing and you read off the music as you sang,” junior Truman Butler said. “This one was harder than the next one, which was dry reading,they match you up with random people and you read from the script, that’s how they could tell if you had the voice and acting for the part.”

Butler will play the lead character Shrek. The audience will follow Shrek on his quest to retake his land.

“The musical is about an ogre named Shrek, and fairy tale creatures are sent to his swamp. Shrek goes to sees Lord Farquaad to get these fairytale creatures out of his swamp,” sophomore Trevor Harr said. “Farquaad tells him he needs to go find this princess and he will give him the deed to the swamp so he can live alone [again]. He goes and rescues the princess [but] they start to fall in love.”

Sophomore Trevor Harr will play Lord Farquaad, the villain of the musical. He isn’t your typical villain however, Farquaad is extremely short, so that means Harr has to be on his knees the entire musical.

There is another quirky character in the musical, that character is Donkey. This donkey talks and follows Shrek on his journey. Freshman Dylan Moran will take on the role as Donkey.

“I am supposed to guide Shrek, I get stuck with him when he tries to go and rescue the princess,” Moran said.

The entire cast has to practice a lot, they practice Monday through Thursday until around 5:30 P.M. The cast has a lot of work to do but there is still a bunch of stuff going on behind the scenes. Choreographers, makeup artists, and stage crews work hard to make this a fantastic experience for the audience.

“The makeup for Shrek is going to take me at least two hours to get into. It’s a cap then they turn me all green, I wear gloves and a fat suit,” Butler said. “I’m getting out (of class) everyday for a show because it is going to take a long time.”

The musical this year has plans to be very diverse in it’s music choice, the crew will be performing familiar and unfamiliar music genres.

“It’s a collection of music, there is modern songs (and) old (songs). It’s very collective music.” Musical Director Donald Johnson said.

Come to the musical this November to see this movie reimagined.