For a few hours on Wednesday night, Grade 3 student Gus Friesen will be a pig, a student, a giant’s son, and the element of fire.
His fellow cast members will be just as busy.
On Wednesday, Friesen and the rest of the Odyssey Productions crew will bring eight Robert Munsch stories to life in Munsch at Play Act 2. The performance runs until April 25, with four evening shows, plus matinees on Friday and Saturday.
“It’s fun,” Friesen said when asked about playing so many characters in one performance. “It’s cool. Certain lines are hard, especially when it’s a line where you don’t have a narrator…. You have to go right after another person talks.”
Friesen is one of many youth actors who will take the stage Wednesday night. He got his start in Broadway North’s production of Matilda in 2025, and enjoyed the experience so much he kept acting.
That led him to Odyssey Productions and Munsch at Play. At eight, he’s the youngest actor in the show.
“I love Robert Munsch,” Friesen said. “His books are really good. They’re really funny and I like the pictures.”
This will be the second time Odyssey Productions brings Robert Munsch characters to life on the stage. They performed Munsch at Play Act 1 back in 2022.
Trent Gillespie was in the director’s chair four years ago and is happy to come back for another round in 2026.
“It’s fun chaos,” Gillespie said with a chuckle. “There are 15 people in the cast—five youth and 10 adults—juggling schedules. The kids come in with so much energy and the adults, even if they’re coming in from a big, long, eight hour day, they’re all of a sudden energized and everyone’s hyper. It’s a really good vibe.”
Gillespie brought as much of the original Act 1 cast back as he could for Act 2. They’ll perform live renditions of popular Robert Munsch stories like ‘David’s Father’, ‘I Have To Go’, and ‘Pigs’.
“He taps into the general culture of kids and youth and the human experience, with some silliness once in a while,” Gillespie said.
“Every story has some truth to it whether it gets embellished in some of the characters and plot we can all connect to some part of it because it’s something we experienced. We exaggerate it to make it fun.”
All six shows will be at the Prince Albert Public Library. Evening shows start at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at the door. Gillespie said it’s been fun working with a young cast, and anyone who enjoyed Act 1 will love Act 2.
“Come back and see some returning faces and brand new ones,” she said. “I am super excited about the energy we bring.”
