How It All Began...

The Carleton Engineering Musical was imagined for the first time in spring 2011. A young engineering student went through a tragic breakup and subsequently confined herself to her basement apartment. Legend has it that she spent many days down there alone, surviving on a crude diet of ramen, tears, and bats. As she lay on her bed in solitude night after night, she lost touch with reality, and her mind’s eye began to conjure many strange images. She had seen the McMaster Engineering Musical several weeks earlier, and the memories from that evening crawled out from the back of her mind and began to take over her imagination. She imagined a motley crew of Carleton engineering students, arranged on a stage and clad in flightsuits, taking a bow. There was something intriguing about this particular hallucination that would not allow her to move on from it. In fact, she passed up a very tantalizing hallucinated date with Jake Lipohar in favor of spending more of her imagined time with this particular group of engineers. There was an overwhelming sense of pride, accomplishment, and genuine mirth about that group of people. It was infectious. She began to forget about her breakup, and her thoughts shifted to making this hallucination a reality.

Ten months later, the Carleton Engineering Musical had come to fruition. And it certainly was not because of this student alone. She had been unbelievably lucky in finding a huge group of other people who were passionate about musical theatre – both inside and outside the engineering community.

The original intent of the C-Eng Musical was to bring a new creative outlet to an unlikely group of people. It was to teach engineering students to write, to sing, to dance, to act, to build, to paint, to organize, to advertise, and to entertain. It was to bring creativity, comedy, and joy to the lives of these extraordinarily hardworking and capable people. But thanks to the suggestion of Professor Ron Miller, who was an incredible resource advice (and for a Narrator!) back in 2012, it became more than that. We decided to give our proceeds to charity, and the tradition has continued ever since.

If you’re reading this, you may have been one of the people who stood alongside us and paved the way for our first show. Maybe you helped write the script. Maybe you were one of the courageous souls who strutted the stage that very first year. Maybe you helped wallpaper the Mackenzie Building with posters. Or maybe you bought a ticket and watched us do our thing.

Regardless of your hand in it, we want to sincerely thank you for being a trailblazer and for having faith in this weird and wonderful production.

- Kati

Founder of the Carleton Engineering Musical