The 40th Annual Follies
Nine student social organizations competed for a slate of awards during homecoming weekend.
In late October, Mississippi College hosted its 40th annual Follies, a collection of student performances featuring singing, dancing, and comedic dialogue. The production pulled the campus into MC’s homecoming weekend. Follies was shown three times between Thursday, Oct. 23, and Friday, Oct. 24. Shawreth Men’s Club finished with multiple awards, including the overall first-place trophy. Kissimee Social Tribe won second place, followed by Laguna Social Tribe in third place.
The men of Shawreth captivated the attention of students and alumni in every performance. Receiving multiple standing ovations, Swor auditorium was filled with scoffs and laughter as spectators reacted to the awkward, inflated humor of their production—Napoleon Dynamite. After the first student-only show on Thursday night, audience members voted for the first round of awards. Student Productions, the group responsible for producing Follies, said that Shawreth won the top club award with over 86% of student votes.
The lead role, Napoleon, was played by Brett Hingle, who also won an individual award for his outstanding performance. Club officers said their success came from a day’s worth of inspiration and months of preparation. Shawreth Follies co-director Joshua Smart said that his partner, Harrison Spinks, wrote the script in one day over the summer. “There was a lot of work put into this,” Smart said. “A whole summer of effort. I mean, some days we were painting for 10 hours.”
Since before the start of the semester, the directors worked to perfect every detail of the show. “It’s a tight-knit group, and we’re so close,” Spinks said. “And just do something that we don’t typically do in these sorts of environments … and bring it home for the guys who care so passionately, it’s incredible.”
Kissimee Social Tribe brought color and craze to the stage as they performed Monsters University. The tribe loosely followed the storyline from the Pixar film and added their own twists and MC-coded humor.
In addition to receiving the overall second-place award, the actresses portraying the “Oozma Kappa” monsters were collectively recognized for another outstanding performer award. “A lot of the girls are super talented and a lot of them did theater when they were in high school, or they did dance when they were in high school, or they have amazing voices,” Kissimee Follies Co-chair Hannah Diaz said. “And you don’t really get to know those things until you see them in Follies and you get to see them in a whole different light.”
The ladies of Laguna Social Tribe walked through a wardrobe and brought the rest of Nelson Hall with them into their production—Narnia. The third-place production also followed the general plot of the original story, with campus inside jokes tied in. “We wanted to pick something that was fun and that also just kind of took you out of this world because it was just really magical and really special to us,” Laguna Follies coordinator Brogan Puckett said.
Rounding out tribe performances were Nenamoosha, Swannanoa and Chenoa. While these organizations did not place in the top three, some members won individual awards for outstanding performances. Nenamoosha won awards for best costumes and best singing with their performance—The Great Gatsby. Swannanoa’s theatrical rendition of Mamma Mia and Chenoa’s charming performance, Romeo and Juliet—both relied heavily on song and dance.
For the gentlemen, four total clubs participated in the production. While Shawreth was the only club to place overall, several members of other clubs won individual performance awards. Jameson Knighton of Rotaract won an award in his role as Jack Kelly in the club’s production of The Newsies. Nathanael Tagert of Decerto also won an individual award for his lead role in Indiana Jones. Kokoa Men’s Club performed their version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Civitan Men’s Club did not perform in the production.
Follies served as the first major event in which new members of social organizations participated. Many students said getting to know the members of their organizations was their favorite part of preparing for the production. “Getting to hang out with all of the new members—It’s been really fun to kind of get close with all of them and see what kind of people they are,” Rotaract Follies chair, Jacob Lane, said.