When signing up for this semester’s 24-Hour Musical, I did not expect to find myself doing sit-ups in a suit and tie in front of a full audience.
However, my experience may just perfectly encapsulate Theater Workshop’s 24-Hour Musical. Nothing is expected, because anything is possible. From a sexy semi-salsa duet to a babydoll being launched into the audience like a discus, the 24-Hour Musical is pure, unbridled chaos.
For those unfamiliar, the 24-Hour Musical is a semesterly event put on by Theater Workshop, Colorado College’s student theater club. Aside from the director and a few others, no one knows what the show will be until the event begins at 7 p.m. on Friday. The production is then presented on campus at 7 p.m. on Saturday. In the 24 hours following the show being announced, the cast and crew must learn, design and rehearse an entire musical. This semester’s show was “Matilda the Musical.”
I should clarify that I am not a musical theater kid. While I act often and love live theater, I do not know the first thing about being in a musical. Luckily, anyone who signs up is guaranteed a spot in the 24-Hour Musical. And so, on Friday, Jan. 30, I was launched headfirst into the production of a musical I knew nothing about.
After reading through the script and listening to the music as a group, we split into departments and it was off to the races. Actors learned choreography while sound and lighting designers tested cues for other scenes. The result was a constant mishmash of color-changing lights, song clips playing at varying volumes and onstage dance sequences, making the entire experience feel like a prolonged disco party. The exception was one song set during Matilda’s gym class, in which the choreography consisted entirely of sit-ups, pushups and running laps around the stage.
“I’m feeling a strong sense of camaraderie right now,” Drew Smith ’27 said at 11:55 p.m. Only five hours into the process, people were still milling around Taylor Theater with enthusiasm.
“As I look around right now, there’s just a lot of people and they’re all doing very different things,” Smith said. “Some people are on tech. Some people are moving lights. Some people are working on dancing. But we’re all working toward one goal and that’s really special.”
At 1 p.m., a tech run loomed before us like a monstrous beast. Tech, the colloquial term for the period right before performances begin, is dedicated to synthesizing departments like lighting, sound and costumes into one cohesive production. Most shows take at least a week to put together. We had five hours.
“It’s just gonna go how it goes. We’re in for a ride. I’m on two hours of sleep and I’ve had three Red Bulls today,” Caitlin Chauvin ’28 said at 1:06 p.m., nearly 18 hours into the process. “I’m feeling excited, nervous—terrified is a more accurate description—and also I’m tired. May I repeat, tired?”
Although we were only able to complete about half of the show during tech, leaving the second half entirely unrehearsed, the process felt more fun than stressful. An underlying tone to every step was, as Kylee Gosney ’26 put it, “silly and dumb.”
We took an hour break before the show to eat pizza and get into costume. During that time, I discovered several sleep-deprived cast and crew members holding hands and swaying in a circle in the Taylor lounge while singing an impromptu rendition of Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.” I say this in the most loving way possible, but if anyone tells you theater is not at least a little like a cult, they are lying. It is, however, a very fun cult.
The show went on at 7 p.m. and was just as chaotic as the 24 hours of rehearsal leading up to it. Cues were missed, lyrics were forgotten and improvised and a babydoll was thrown into the audience, mostly by accident.
After bows, a strong sense of accomplishment filled the backstage area, accompanied by high-fives and choruses of “We did it!” In my life, I have never been more excited to go to sleep.