Whereas other Las Mas’ officers love for theatre started with appreciation, Colby Crawford “shamefully, as a child, thought it was childish and dying art.” Crawford’s childhood impression of theatre was like an unseen puzzle, scattered with the unwritten pieces that make up not only the Las Mas historian he is today but also the purpose in his craft.
“I feel like I’m a puzzle piece, and every show that I’m in, and everything that I work on, every new thing that I learn, is just slowly filling that 1,000-piece puzzle,” Crawford said.
As his childhood days turned into teenage years, his pieces slowly started to come together. In Crawford’s senior year of high school, he met his future partner and 99th Las Mas Student Senate Representative, Halle Dunn, and Las Mas member, AJ Soto.
“They kept trying to convince me for like, two and a half years, literally, since sophomore year to early senior year, they were like, ‘Please join theatre. Just do it. Just try it out. You’ll love it,’” Crawford said.
After years of convincing, Crawford decided to give theatre a fair shot. In his senior year, his theatre adapted the board game, “Clue,” within the so called “Pit” of their high school cafeteria. He remembers the production being limited with “a couple spotlights just sitting around and a little light board that controlled this front row of lights; the other rows were broken.”
“There I started studying theatre history, and I started finding out this is a really cool thing,” he said. “Somewhere along the line, I just decided, ‘You know what, yeah, I’ll do this for the rest of my life.’”
After high school, Crawford decided to start small and set his sights for TJC. Crawford realized “starting small” takes big sacrifices. “I used to come here as a kid, but I’ve never been this far away from home,” he said.
Attending TJC was Crawford’s “biggest jar in my life” and brought a deeper anxiety of not knowing where he belonged.
“I thought that I wasn’t going to make it here,” Crawford said. “This was such a bigger place than my high school, which it’s not that big of a place, which is so funny now, but it was so much bigger than anything that I was used to.”
Crawford was cast into the depths of TJC like a small fish in a big pond, submerged in the sea of his own anxiety. TJC’s Las Mas served as a lighthouse that helped Crawford see the surface that lies above him. One of the individuals who was the lightkeeper to Crawford’s journey was the 98th Las Mas Student Treasurer Otto Straus. “He showed me that there’s no limit and that people here and people everywhere are willing to accept whatever you are willing to offer, as much as people will try to tell you that that’s not true,” Crawford said.
Straus’ words filled Crawford with a new drive. “All of that anxiety and that pent up insecurity was holding only holding me back,” Crawford said. “Around the time that ‘Antigone’ showed last year that I really was like, ‘You know what? I’m worth something, and I’m gonna make everyone here know it.’”
Crawford’s favorite childhood story, “James and the Giant Peach,” was adapted into a play by TJC’s Theatre Department in Fall 2025, and there was no chance Crawford would miss this opportunity. “Prior to coming to TJC and this year, I had only been in three plays in my entire life, and ‘James and the Giant Peach’ for one was both my first lead role as well as my first musical,” Crawford said.
On stage, Crawford starred as the chaotic yet loyal “Centipede” that aids James on his journey in ‘James and the Giant Peach. As the Puppet Master, Crawford spent his summer working on the puppetry for the seagulls and bugs alongside Las Mas alumni Jay Stevens. He also helped create the mechanisms, props and set designs in the play. This production revived a sense of creativity found in Crawford’s childhood.
“Ever since I was young, it’s brought me so much joy to sculpt things and to build things, and getting to do that for a production for one of my favorite children’s stories ever, and something that I also get to be on stage and be a part of was — even though it was a lot of grueling work over the summer it was genuinely magical to do that,” Crawford said.
Crawford was able to create something magical that would “breathe life into something that’s just foam and wood and paint.”
As his performance echoed through the halls of the Wise Cultural Arts Building with his musical solo “Eating the Peach,” Crawford unlocked the most powerful thing he could “give to this world.”
“My voice. ‘James and the Giant Peach’ was what helped me,” Crawford said. “It’s the big thing because it was my first role on that big of a stage, and it really showed me that my voice can reach out there. I can make people remember me, and I can share everything that I have.”
“James and the Giant Peach” inspired him to participate in the production of “The Hairy Ape” and now become the 99th TJC Las Mas historian.
His role as historian is filled with making sure TJC students and faculty are informed through his social media management, graphic designs through flyers, posts, and other mediums. The 99th TJC Las Mas Sergeant at Arms Sydney Quintana explained how much Crawford’s work keeps their organization in good standing.
“He’s amazing. He took all of our pictures for all the accounts, and he does all the advertising for the shows and stuff,” Quintana said.
The 99th TJC Las Mas Student Senate Representative Halle Dunn also explains the impact of Crawford’s work. “He is incredibly talented and has as done a great job as historian. It’s not an easy job to do. He has a lot of responsibility, and it is something that he handles very, very well,” Dunn said. “You can see him thrive in his graphic design, because he just loves it so much. I admire people who put so much love and care into their work. Really, he puts a lot into it.”
Crawford’s experiences in Las Mas have made him happier than ever.
“Some spark just went off in my head, and now I feel like I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I feel like I’m more enthusiastic and I’m more uppity than I have been since I first fell in love with theatre and senior year, which is crazy,” Crawford said.
For Crawford, theatre is more than a hobby. “It is a life form. It’s a conglomeration of everyone’s life and experiences brought into one big art,” Crawford explained. “It’s Las Mascaras for me.”
