The cast of Shrek takes a bow after Sunday's opening night performance in New York. The footwear of some of the characters is made in Nova Scotia. (David Goldman/Associated Press)When the musical version of the movie Shrek opened on Broadway earlier this week, a little bit of Nova Scotia was on the stage.

Many of the cast members were wearing boots and shoes made in a workshop in the small town of Granville Ferry in southwest Nova Scotia.

Handmade Shoes has made itself known over the last two decades as a maker of specialty shoes for film and theatre.

Cobblers Jon Gray, Janel Warmington and Fred Longtin create everything by hand — from the wooden lasts that mark out the shape of an individual foot, to the fine details that go into creating footwear that's unique to a theatrical character.

The home of Handmade Shoes is a simple workshop in Granville Ferry, N.S. (Jon Gray)"We started making shoes there for the Stratford Festival, the Shaw Festival and the Canadian Opera Company, which is pretty much starting at the top," Longtin told CBC News.

A remount of Kiss Me Kate in 1989 or 1990 was their introduction to Broadway.

Word quickly spread through the tight-knit theatre community, and soon they were cobbling shoes and boots for Wicked, The Little Mermaid and Fiddler on the Roof.

For Shrek they created the boots for the character of the Magic Mirror, as well as several members of the King's army.

They've also made shoes for Julie Andrews, John Malkovich, Cate Blanchett, Placido Domingo and Renée Zellweger in Cinderella Man.

Gray said he started off as an orthopedic shoemaker in Hamilton before coming to Handmade Shoes.

"I came here in 2001… and only meant to spend the summer. I had plans — I was going out West and just got hung up," he said.

"Now I have two daughters there's just so much to learn. Even to this day I'm learning every day."

Like Warmington, whose background is in theatre, he apprenticed as a shoemaker to Longtin and gradually acquired the skills to make shoes for film and stage.

The three cobblers have an upstairs workshop with workbenches, cutting tables, a heavy-duty sewing machine and bolts of leather piled from floor to ceiling and a downstairs shop where the shoes are put together.

"The show we're working on right now is Wicked, based on a book by Gregory Maguire, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," Gray told CBC News.

Handmade Shoes cobbled this piece of footwear for Wicked's Emerald City ensemble characters. (Jon Gray) The touring show is heading for Los Angeles and Chicago and will across the U.S. and Canada.

"The shoes are very flashy…. There's a lot of novelty leathers, a lot of metallic colours and high-heels. It's a mixture of munchkin-wear and high-fashion shoes," Gray said.

Deborah Dryden, resident designer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore., told CBC News she has been ordering from Handmade Shoes for 20 years.

"It's really lovely to find someone with the talent and skill, but also the imagination," she said.

"Because for theatre we are not what we can buy on the internet, but asking for curious shapes, odd foot sizes. So it runs the whole gamut of imagination as well as talent and skill."

For more on this story, listen to CBC Radio One's Maritime Magazine on Sunday.

With files from Phlis McGregor