Riverside Theatre for Kids Transforms Into Arendelle This Summer

For a few weeks this summer, Riverside Theatre's Waxlax Stage stops being a stage at all and becomes the frozen kingdom of Arendelle. Riverside's youth-education program is staging Disney's Frozen as a fully immersive theatrical experience, opening Thursday, June 18, and unlike the main-stage productions that bring in professional Broadway talent, this one belongs entirely to local young performers. That's a big part of what makes it worth seeing.

What sets this production apart is that it puts the audience inside the story rather than in front of it. There is no conventional seating chart. Instead, guests are seated family-style at long community tables designed to evoke the grand banquet hall of a royal castle, and the show happens all around them, Anna, Elsa, and Olaf moving through the room while the songs everyone already knows by heart fill the space. If you have a child who has watched the film a hundred times and belts "Let It Go" in the car, this is a different order of experience: they're not watching Arendelle, they're in it.

The cast is a company of roughly two dozen young artists from Riverside Theatre Education, directed by the program's education staff. For the students, a full immersive musical is a serious piece of training, blocking a show in the round, holding character with the audience an arm's length away, and singing a demanding Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez score that includes "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?," "For the First Time in Forever," and "Love Is an Open Door." For the audience, the payoff is a level of energy and warmth that only a room full of local kids playing to their own neighbors can produce.

On select evenings, the experience begins before the curtain. Guests can arrive early for a themed Royal Menu served family-style at their seats, a special add-on curated by Riverside's executive chef, Sue Torres, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who came to Vero Beach after a New York career that included La Grenouille and her own Manhattan restaurant. The pre-show dining is a separate ticketed option from the show itself, so it's worth checking which performances include it when you book.

Beyond the main production, Riverside keeps the Arendelle spirit going with its outdoor Olaf's Summer Bash events on the theatre grounds. Expect photos with Olaf, an interactive family DJ party, dancing, a specialty grill menu, and the theatre's all-natural, house-made shaved ice. It's a low-key, family-friendly way to extend the fun for younger kids who may not sit through a full musical.

Disney's Frozen, inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen and set in a coastal, Norway-flavored kingdom of fjords and endless winter, has become a modern family classic, and seeing it performed a few feet away by kids from your own community gives it a charm the movie can't match. For exact performance dates, dining details, Summer Bash schedules, and tickets, visit riversidetheatre.com or contact the Riverside Theatre box office directly.

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Ava Cook

Community Manager at Vero Vine

Hello!
My name is Ava Cook and I am a Freshman at Florida Southern College in Lakeland FL. I am currently a B.F.A musical theatre major with a minor in Business Administration. I love reading, singing, acting, dancing, and writing. My favorite part about Vero Beach and Indian River County as a whole is how close the community is. Vero Vine is important to me as it allows me to do my part it bringing the community together also, sharing events, small businesses, and other local happenings. If you have any questions or any recommendations for me, my email is always open [email protected].