By Rin Yanase

Engineering student-run theatre group EngPlay kicked off its 2026-27 season with their first event of the year on Oct. 2.

In a classroom at the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, the club unveiled this year’s crew members to attendees.

Sharon Ebenesar, a fifth-year aerospace engineering student, is the co-director of EngPlay this year. She’s spent five years with the student group, previously serving as a part of the stage crew and production team.

Ebenesar said the event was the club’s “kick-off,” with a focus on following up on people who showed their interest in EngPlay during orientation week. 

“We’re trying to promote and give more outreach for people who want to join stage crew or technical crew,” she said.

Sophie Petrushkina is a fifth-year aerospace engineering student and former director of the club. She said EngPlay puts on an annual rendition or parody of an existing creative work or an original piece written from scratch.

In May, the troupe put on a musical parody of The Hobbit at Toronto’s Alumnae Theatre with an “engineering twist,” which included the swapping of Middle Earth for “Middle-Eng.” 

During the winter semester, the group also hosted “Eng Got Talent,” an on-campus talent show which invited students across the province to perform.

The Oct. 2 event also gave a rundown on their yearly schedule, a screening of the club’s past works and inclusive games.

Mokorinayo Olowoyeye, a first-year industrial engineering student, learned about EngPlay through their social media posts and booth at the university orientation. 

Olowoyeye said she was a part of the ensemble in her high school’s musical theatre club. “Even before that, I just really loved musicals,” she said. 

For Olowoyeye, who is searching for something that allows her to “find a merge between the engineering and the arts,” EngPlay was a perfect creative outlet.

“I feel like there’s a lot of people who think if you’re a student who grew up artsy and you want to go into STEM, for whatever reason it may be, you have to leave your arts at home. And I feel like that’s not true,” Olowoyeye said.

“I’ve realized there’s a lot of correlation between engineering and then music, theatre and arts. Maybe because engineering revolves around a creative aspect, so having this creative [outlet] is also really important,” Petrushkina said.

Petrushkina said her experience as a director was challenging because there was “a lot of potential for the club to actually not survive.” 

Being the sole applicant for the director position, Petrushkina led the crew, pulling the club out of the very fragile state to be able to sell out its annual show. “It took a lot of effort, sweat, tears,” she said.

Olowoyeye said finding communities in the intersection of your interests or background makes the student experience more rewarding. In addition to EngPlay, she said she just recently joined the Toronto Metropolitan University chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers. 

“I feel like that really helps you because specific people who share similar interests or skills are able to help you more,” she said.

As a new co-director, Ebenesar said, “we want it to be a safe space for everybody to have an outlet, like how [Petrushkina] and I had an outlet for our creative skills, to be that source of entertainment and reliability for engineering students who feel the same way.”

She said the crew also wants to try collaborating with students from other departments, broadening their outreach while “keeping it engineering-centred and engineering-focused.”

EngPlay announced on Oct. 2, their next annual production will be a parody of Legally Blonde and more details will be posted on social media in the coming days.