by Alex Melnick
Arts & Life Ediotr
Freshmen neuroscience major Katelyn Ferrell has an incredibly warm personality which
comes through whether on the theater stage or in the stage inside the bowl. Ferrell was in the acclaimed theater production Major Havoc that went on the last two weekends on Millsaps campus. A Jackson native, she loves crafts and traveling. “I like happy things,” she said with a giggle. Ferrell wants to go places in a “VW van and just travel all over the place.” An aspiring neuroscientist, Ferrell also has a vested interest in pediatrics and seems to have a very altruistic spirit. Her interest in neuroscience springs from the fact that her father suffers from a traumatic brain injury, and so she “wants to help people who suffer from that.” This love of others extends to Millsaps faculty who teach her neuroscience as well—Ferrell loves her professors and the classes and believes that the faculty here does their best to educate students.
The intrepid explorer also has a theatrical side: She wrote the “Chubby Bunny” and “Russian Standoff” skits in Major Havoc. The two skits are formatted as audience participation games, and have been crowd favorites—especially because Dr. Anne Macmaster of the English department was chosen to participate in a round of “Chubby Bunny” on closing night. The skits reflect Ferrell’s happy and silly nature. “Chubby Bunny” consists of Ferrell and another randomly chosen audience member stuffing their faces with marshmallows while taking turns saying “Chubby Bunny” until one of them is unable to do so, and “Russian Standoff” consists of Ferrell and a chosen audience member smashing eleven hardboiled eggs and one raw egg on their foreheads. (The standoff occurs because no one knows 11 of the 12 eggs is the booby-trapped one.) Ferrell felt that the cast “really made the games their own.” She was also a cast member in skits “Hip-Hop Poetry Slam,” “Sweet Dreams,” and “Touching Tips,” and served as an understudy for cast member Krystal Jackson in “Fault Lines.” However, her favorite skit remains a tie between the two she created.
She was adamant that all cast members of Major Havoc were equal, but that she was “pretty sure” she made a “great addition to the cast.” (“Not to brag,” she added after with another giggle.) Ferrell said she “loved making you guys laugh,” and was overwhelmingly grateful for the family the Major Havoc production had afforded her.
“We made a family out of it. We told each other our stories. Maybe the first time we’ve ever told our stories is in that production! Now, we’re really close,” she says of her cast members. “We’re just one great big family made out of people that, before, had never even seen each other on campus. Now, we love each other.”
The theater company family is currently trying to convince Theater Director Peter Freidrich to let them travel with “Major Havoc,” but is otherwise undecided on what the next big project will be for the theater company. One thing is for certain: Ferrell wants to “continue to do theater” for the remainder of her college career here at Millsaps.