Creighton’s Department of Chemistry staged its “Melodious Musichemical Manifestation” Tuesday and Wednesday in Rigge Science 209. The Wednesday night performance was the 52nd in the show’s history since it began in 1995.

Arts & Sciences junior Elsbeth Klotz appeared in the musical for the first time this year.

“Doing the chem show is a blast,” she said. “It’s a great time to hang out with friends, make a fool of yourself and learn a bit of chemistry. It was a lot of work, but there’s no way I would not participate next year.”

The show is made up of 22 performances in which the players don’t talk. Instead, they perform chemical demonstrations set to music where they do everything from making liquids change color and blowing up methane-filled balloons to creating green slime.

This year, there were 26 students and three faculty performing or helping with the segments.

Associate professor, faculty co-director and producer, Gary Michels, said the first show featured him and three students. Since then, the most it’s ever had has been around 45 students.

“I used to encourage students to sign up, but we get more than [we] can handle. I never turn anybody away,” he said. “The conditions are they have to be able to come to both shows and come to the dress rehearsal.”

The two shows in the fall are held to celebrate National Chemistry Week, though National Chemistry Week occurred during Fall Break this year. Practices are held two weeks prior to the event and a dress rehearsal is also held. The first performance is for Creighton and the second for the Omaha community. Michels said the show is sometimes performed out-of-town and there may be another Creighton show in April.

Arts & Sciences senior Nadia Sebastian appeared in the show in both the fall and spring semesters last year.

“It is a lot of work trying to schedule with other students in the number and finding time to practice, and often a lot of time is involved with preparing the chemical demonstration materials,” she said. “Of course there is a good amount of cleaning up and getting ready for the next performance each time. However, the whole experience is a lot of fun, and also adds another dimension to a chemistry major.”

Experiments are handed down from each show to the next, Michels said, but the students can come up with their own choreography if they want. Also, if students want to create their own demonstration, they can do that.

“Chemistry majors are pretty busy, as are most of the majors at Creighton University,” Michels said. “To have time to develop something like this is kind of precious … You really have to think through things.”

Michels said he was pleased with the Tuesday show. “They did a great job,” he said. “I watched the show with a different eye than anybody in the audience because I’ve seen it and as the director and the producer I know what I want them to be doing. It was a great show. Technically, it was near perfect, there were a couple of little glitches.

“We’ve had a couple perfect shows, but this might be in the top 10 percent of the shows we’ve done.”

Michels said the performance is important, partially because he wants to demonstrate that chemistry majors can be fun and outgoing.

“Usually you stereotype a chem major as a kind of a geeky, quiet person that sits in the back, that are really weird and couldn’t possibly do anything like this,” Michels said. “A little bit of me is tries to take away that stereotype.”

However, he said, it is also important for bringing the chemistry department together. The show is useful because it allows students from different classes to interact.

“There’s something more to being a chemistry major than just being here and taking the classes and moving on,” Michels said. “And that is to create a community of chemistry majors that know who you are and associate with.”

Arts & Sciences junior Shelby Takeshita agreed. Takeshita appeared in the musical for the first time Tuesday.

“I think that almost everyone finished their performance with a smile,” she said. “Not only did we get to share our love of chemistry with others, but we as chemistry students had the opportunity to get to know each other.”

“It goes beyond the show into communicating that we are faculty for our students, and we are people for each other,” Michels said. “In one instant, in one hour, in one performance, we leave reality and we become something totally different, something only really experienced here at Creighton University.”