Three years after making his Muny debut, incoming Affton High School senior Spencer Slavik is back on the stage, playing a crucial role in the youth ensemble of “Shrek The Musical.” The production, based on the 2001 movie “Shrek,” centers around the titular character and his quest to save a princess from a dragon to please the villainous lord so he will remove a group of displaced fairytale creatures from Shrek’s once private swamp.
“Me and four other teens get to puppet the dragon, which is really fun. It’s a five-person puppet, and the lead puppeteer puppeteers the head with controls for the mouth and eye blinking. It’s very cool,” Slavik said.
Though modest on how he was chosen for that role — “I think they just picked the four tallest kids (in the ensemble),” he shared, smiling — Slavik didn’t shy away when recounting the difficult audition process. Beginning in winter, Slavik and the other hopeful performers were sent audition materials to practice and perfect before submitting first-round auditions via video. Slavik met with both a dance and a voice teacher “to fine-tune the details” and ensure peak performance.
“Then you wait with your fingers crossed and hopefully get a callback,” he said.
Things intensified quickly during callbacks, with performers expected to execute more of the dance following a short learning session. Additional singing was also done before performers were sent home, awaiting the results.
“You go home and, again, you wait and think,” Slavik said. “Then you get an email that has the information of what they would like you to do, hopefully.”
Slavik first received notice that he was accepted into the Muny Teens Troupe, an elite group of teens who perform in both Muny preshow and regional events. Though an honor in itself, this also meant he was guaranteed a show as all Teens Troupe members are. When he later found out that he had booked “Shrek,” Slavik said there was “a lot of excitement.”
“The director, John Tartaglia, and the choreographer, Patrick O’Neill — they’re both very creative people, so they have a lot of fun stuff going on. ‘Shrek’ is a fun musical, so there’s a lot happening. A lot of random dance parts … there’s a lot of silly costumes and quick dance things for teens,” Slavik said.
He added that because “Shrek” is this year’s Muny “family show,” there were additional nights of performances and an extra-large youth ensemble, making the already challenging, albeit exciting, experience even more so. Rehearsals began on June 14 with the first show held on June 25 — just an 11-day turnaround time to create something magical.
“Because it’s so fast … we have a designated dance person that helps translate and takes us back to practice while the adults are learning. We can be ready to go so they don’t have to spend time going over stuff with us,” Slavik explained. “Then there are a lot of adjustments we do along the way … They don’t want anyone to get hurt or fall in front of the 11,000 seats. You can practice, but half the stuff you practice in the first rehearsal might be changed by the last rehearsal.”
Though the show wrapped up on June 2, when The Call spoke with Slavik, it was reaching its midpoint in the run. He shared that while the weather did negatively impact a few of the performances — and when it wasn’t raining, the heat could, at times, become unbearable — the show as a whole only became stronger with time.
“Obviously, the more you go through it, the more fluid it becomes. Like running code, sort of. It’s just repetitive and the same thing, so it’s smoother,” Slavik said. “The best moment of a show process is after you put in all your work and you see everyone else putting all their work in, and then you get the show going … You get to see the vision that the directors have been seeing from the beginning, and you understand what they’ve been looking for. That’s really cool.”
When asked to give advice to someone wanting to break into the performing world — as the same question was asked to a young Slavik three years ago after his inaugural Muny performance — the incoming high school senior shared his modern take.
“You need to seek out a lot of perspectives from more experienced people. When people try to describe their view of theater, they’re trying to focus on this singularity, like this truth sort of, but it’s hard to put an exact truth into words. So you have to hear it from multiple people to see different angles of this truth to kind of understand where it actually is. The truth of acting for me is empathy, but that could be different for someone else,” Slavik said. “Observe first, and then be confident and try out new masks.”
