While engineering may seem like a narrow and scientific career path, a Carleton engineering community is making the case that it is inseparable from artistry.
Some students from Carleton University found a witty way to celebrate their engineering major through the arts hand in hand — in the form of an annual musical production.
The Carleton Engineering Musical has been putting on parody productions of popular musicals for the last 15 years.
On Friday and Saturday, C-Eng Musical will debut their long-awaited performance of The Atoms Family, a parody of The Addams Family, at Brookfield High School. Rest assured that themes of familial wackiness, creepy vibes — and a dash of cringe — will not be forgotten.
The musical will feature the classic dynamics of the Atoms family: a group of engineering students who live together and are on the same Frosh team. One of their members, a character named Thursday, wants to move out of the house to live with Lennox, who’s part of the Buttress family, made up of students in Carleton’s faculty of design.
The C-Eng community has been working on this production since last summer.
Jules Wong, co-writing director in C-Eng Musical and a third-year computer engineering Carleton student, worked alongside the community’s directors and sub-directors to find a fitting musical to parody. Wong looked for a light, fun musical with a family dynamic.
“There’s a lot of amazing musicals out there that deal with real world issues that would be too serious to portray,” she said. “We, who are in charge of writing, props, costumes, makeup, tech, stage, all get a say and a vote in what the musical should be for the year.”
Once The Addams Family emerged as a clear favourite, Wong and her co-director, Jaime Kfouri, got familiar with the story’s plot.
“We thought about all the different conflicts between the characters, and the overarching theme of the musical being that the two families have a lot of differences, but they’re able to come together. So we wanted to think of a kind of similar conflict that we could parody that would be relatable to people in our community,” Wong said.
With the Atoms family representing the engineering students and the Buttress family representing design students, Wong said that despite the two families’ disagreements, the eventual resolution of conflict represents the real-life unity of engineering and design students within the faculty.
“We wanted to help bring their culture and inside jokes into mainstream engineering culture and jokes, which was a lot of fun,” she said. “At the end, the two families are together, and everyone’s happy.
“That was the C-Eng utopia we’re looking to create.”
The creation process allows students to get creative while also building community.
Co-director of C-Eng Musical, Erika Langner, is a third-year electrical engineering student who loves music. Langner played in her high school band and got involved in musicals in Grade 12. When it was time to choose a career path for university, she said choosing to study engineering meant she would have to decide between sciences and the arts.
Discovering the Engineering Musical community bridged that gap.
“It was really great to be able to find this community at Carleton in my first year because I can do engineering but also continue doing musicals,” Langner said.
Langner found the community during her Frosh Week and has been a member ever since. Being a contributing member of the show and actively working towards performance night builds strong bonds with all the teams and members involved, she said.
The community environment proves that engineers are more than “nerdy people who are going into doing computer stuff.” She hopes the C-Eng Musical will remain accessible for engineering students.
“A lot of engineers tend to be very creative, surprisingly,” she said. “A lot of us love music, and I think it’s a great outlet to be able to perform when you otherwise wouldn’t be able to during university.”
Despite the community’s name, students outside of engineering aren’t left behind.
Breanna Gibbons, a second-year health sciences student, is playing the role of Mortician, the parody of Morticia’s character.
Gibbons, like many members of the C-Eng community, has a background in music and a love of the arts.
She said being welcomed into the community has made her appreciative of the harmony between STEM and the arts.
“I know many people who stopped after high school, which is sad, but I know it’s hard to balance the two,” she said. “Having this as a musical where people [studying] engineering can do the arts as well [is] so important.”
As opening day approaches, Gibbons said she hopes the audience will come to value theatre as much as she does.
The C-Eng Musical community hopes to keep this tradition going for many more years to come.
“Knowing that there’s such a time-honoured tradition behind me, where so many other people have had the same experience I did of having fun, creating something with other people is a really special experience,” Wong said.
“It’s not something I take for granted.”
Featured image provided by the Carleton Engineering Musical.
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