Completely Charming: Prince revisits his quest for happily ever after

It all started with a prince in the faraway Kingdom of Texas.

Bret Shuford found the stage at a young age, and on his quest to find his happily ever after, it was acting that carried him all the way to the pinnacle of the theater world: New York City and even Broadway. Looking back on his story when he was developing a fresh cabaret-style show, the thought occurred to Shuford, "Why should princesses get all the glory?"

"The idea behind the show is to take all these different prince songs -- they're princes from Disney movies and from Broadway musicals and even Prince the artist -- and put them all into a show about a prince from the Kingdom of Texas, and use that as a frame to tell my story. It's a really fun night," he details.

"Charming: A Tale of an American Prince" weaves familiar tunes by Sondheim, Lutvak, Disney's leading men and rock icon Prince into a tale of friendship bracelets, giants and perhaps even a furry woodland creature. Shuford debuted his show in 2013, but is pulling "Charming" out of the archives and dusting off his vocal chords for a one-night-only performance Saturday at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville.

"Any chance to bring live performance back right now, yes. Absolutely," Shuford says of the WAC's invitation to bring the show back to the stage. When Broadway closed in March, Shuford was performing with the cast of "Wicked." After a few uncertain months in New York, and a few moves here and there, his husband was offered a teaching job in Houston, so the pair decided to relocate to Shuford's former home state.

"I have a feeling that I might get a little emotional," Shuford says of the prospect of returning to the stage for the first time since March. "My hope has always been with this story to help inspire people to find their own kingdom and know that you don't have to be stuck with the kingdom you've got. You can build your own. So, hopefully people who maybe are feeling stuck these days are going to come and be able to unite and experience something that will motivate them to realize that there's a lot you can do with this time. We can all be creative, and we can create an experience together.

"And I'm just super excited to get to hear applause. Or laughter. Anything!" he adds. "Because it's always just me in my apartment."

Since returning to the South, Shuford has managed to sustain a busy schedule through content creation, entrepreneurial and acting coaching, and the podcast he and his husband, Stephen Hanna, produce, called "The Broadway Husbands."

"It's certainly been an interesting balance of learning how to pivot," Shuford admits. "I've never in my adult life spent this much time with my family. And during an election, and during all of this craziness, it's been quite a year of learning how to maintain and communicate and stay healthy -- and also learn how to build a business. So it's going to be really nice to get to go do the thing that I know how to do. I know how to perform; I've done that my whole life. It's going to be such a refreshing thing this weekend to just get to be on stage after all of this time.

"I think that the arts are what make our country unique," he adds pensively. "It's something that, without live performance and the arts right now, you can feel that there's something missing. That opportunity for people to experience a story together where the audience's heart beats at the same time, I think it's something that people probably don't even realize they miss as much as they do."