This year’s third annual engineering musical, Duct Tape—based on the Broadway show Hairspray—performed to a near sold-out crowd on its closing night March 1.
The plot followed Tracy Torquenstein, played by Hailey Quiquero, and her quest to become Super Frosh of the engineering orientation week, an aspiration soon scoffed at by her peers.
The cast delivered an engaging and enthusiastic performance, continuously fuelled by the audience’s energy. Punctuated by a mix of dance numbers, song, and humour, the show made for an entertaining night.
Kristen Jerabek, director of the show, said the musical is a special and unique opportunity for engineering students.
“[It] shows them the talents that they thought they might not be able to explore coming to study engineering, and that’s what I thought originally,” she said.
But it’s been a long process for Jerabek and the writing team, who re-wrote scripts and songs for the parody version of the original musical. It first started with Jerabek’s concept of the show.
“Before I chose Hairspray, I chose what I wanted the musical to be about. I wanted it to be about women in engineering,” she said. “I wanted to show that engineers really have embraced their female engineering counterparts, and I wanted to explore that topic.”
While Hairspray deals with racism and body image, Jerabek said Duct Tape illustrates how engineering students, especially female ones, are perceived.
Playing the lead role Quiquero, a second-year engineering student, delivered a versatile Tracy, assuming her character both in emotion and in depth.
Quiquero said her character’s enthusiasm was the trait she admired most.
“She’s really gung ho, and she really wanted a super frosh cape so she went for it,” Quiquero said. “I never even thought about [the super frosh cape] when I was in first year because, well first of all it’s a traditionally male role, which is what this show’s all about.”
Embodying Tracy’s mother, Edna Torquenstein, with ease and character was electrical engineering student David Berton.
“It’s easier to get on stage and be completely someone else,” he said of his role as a female character. “I really like being on stage, and being out there.”
As for Ben Adair, a second-time cast member of the musical who gave a dynamic performance as Kale Goldenrod—based on Seaweed from Hairspray—the process gave him a chance to get to know more people inside the engineering community.
“[You see] different sides of people that you might not normally see of people outside of theatre,” he said. “That’s what I like most about theatre.”
Overall the cast of Duct Tape performed a captivating, fast-paced show led by Quiquero and Dylan Bardy, who played Link Shields. Adam Prins took on the role of wild child D.I.C.K. and Alaina Polkki became the beautiful and youthful Inez Beamish.
Last of all, full-out musical numbers from Mama I’m an Engineer to C-ENG highlighted the cast’s talent, with the band rounding out the show to its ultimate calibre.
