It’s not often that you hear “Shrek” and “burlesque” in the same sentence — but the “Let’s Get Shrekxy” burlesque show hosted by Cherry Bonbon Productions has taken the Orlando scene by storm.
In honor of six years of Hourglass Brewing here in Orlando, founder of the production company Cherry Bonbon is bringing a new spin on their “Let’s Get Shrekxual” show for the anniversary party. The 18-and-up burlesque and bingo event is already sold out for July 12, but there are limited tickets still available for the next edition on Aug. 22.
After falling down a rabbit hole bingeing the many Shrek movies, shorts and shows, Bonbon found herself struck by the pervasive nostalgia for the early 2000s icon. She quickly realized that she was not the only one of her generation with a strange attachment to the animated swamp creature. And Shrek seems to be just as popular as ever, as evidenced by folks getting turned away at the door at previous sold-out Let’s Get Shrekxuals at Conduit. “Most of our families dragged us [to the movie] for one reason or another, and whether we loved it or hated it, it still is in our brains,” says Bonbon. “And now they’re on Shrek 5, so it’s clearly stuck around.”
The event will be a massive bingo game hosted by the not-so-lean, green, swamp machine, Shrek himself. King River Glass will star and emcee as Shrek, telling jokes and stories as the bingo game proceeds. When a lucky winner calls bingo, a Shrekxy burlesque performer will take the stage and the winner will receive a prize pack based around a character from the series. New performers will also join in the fun, like Gingy at this weekend’s show and Jessica Nova as Puss in Boots in August.
For her part, Bonbon entered the world of burlesque over a decade ago, founding her own production company, Speakeasy Sirens, where she found steady success and became a crowd favorite in the nerd-lesque scene for years. Over a year ago, she rebranded her troupe as Cherry Bonbon Productions, embracing fandom culture and freewheeling burlesque shows featuring your favorite fictional characters.
“The burlesque scene is a bunch of theater kids who just take their clothes off,” Bonbon explains. “This shit ain’t Shakespeare — there’s so many people who look at this art form and take it far too seriously. I’ve performed as a Furby on stage before.”
Bonbon hopes to challenge her audience’s preconceptions when it comes to burlesque. With clever riffs on fandoms and iconic animated characters that the broader population is familiar with, she and the troupe have developed a kind of “intro” burlesque show for those who may be unfamiliar with the art form.
“Those things, I think, make it accessible for people who have never seen burlesque before, or might be intimidated to go because the show might be, like, hypersexualized to them,” says Bonbon. “There’s so many different styles of burlesque and I think people need to be more open to letting things just be fun and letting themselves have fun.”
When putting together her troupe, Bonbon has worked to emphasize diversity and inclusion in the shows. The burlesque they perform is not strictly bound by the canon of the stories or characters they adapt, instead they use the characters as launching points for individual creativity and play. And crucially, she strives to foster acceptance and creativity within her troupe, no matter what her performers might look like.
“There’s a lot of body types that are excluded and a lot of people who are excluded for nothing related to their talent or their want to work. It’s something they can’t control, so I try and give them a space where they can safely perform,” says Bonbon. “Almost every single show, we will have people come up to us and say, ‘I didn’t think that this is something that I could do … seeing a different body on that stage makes me feel this is a possibility.'”
This mission reaches far beyond our Orlando community, with Bonbon and Nova’s “Hell Hotel Show,” a Hazbin Hotel-themed burlesque show that launched locally and now tours the country, accumulating more than 20,000 followers on their TikTok page in the process.
“Being able to have people around the country who want to pay us to go take our weird and crazy art, it’s a fever dream,” says Bonbon.
Cherry Bonbon Productions has upcoming shows based around the videogame “Baldur’s Gate” in Tampa and the aforementioned Hazbin Hotel show in Winter Park. They’re even working on developing a new show based on the “Date Everything!” videogame dating simulator.
“There’s no limitations to burlesque,” says Bonbon, “whether that be performance, style, accessibility, body type — there’s no limitations.”
Hourglass Brewing Curry Ford
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This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2025.