{"id":130303,"date":"2020-01-24T12:04:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T17:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=130303"},"modified":"2023-01-24T13:46:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T18:46:04","slug":"sankofa-at-bates-in-2020-reality-isnt-a-one-way-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2020\/01\/24\/sankofa-at-bates-in-2020-reality-isnt-a-one-way-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Sankofa on MLK Day, where &#8216;reality isn&#8217;t a one-way street&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The opening scene of this year&#8217;s Sankofa show, staged on the evening of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, was set in a classroom at mythical Mays College, the name being an intentional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2013\/03\/10\/benjamin-mays-living-legacy\/\">allusion to Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Among the students in the class was Safiya, played by Imti Hassan &#8217;23 of Portland, Maine. &#8220;Safiya is determined,&#8221; says Hassan. &#8220;She&#8217;s taking college courses at Mays College while being a high school senior. She has a lot of big dreams that I feel she will accomplish because she&#8217;s so driven.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, some adults in her life, such as her boss at a fast-food restaurant, are dragging her down. &#8220;Adults should be there to uplift teenagers and be their mentors,&#8221; says Hassan.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #009779;\"><em>Video by Theophil Syslo.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sankofa 2020 | Reality Isn&#039;t A One-Way Street\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_VCH3dwLs0I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The role was important to Hassan because, she says, she is a Somali American, a group that in Lewiston comprises approximately 20 percent of the city&#8217;s population.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have never seen a Somali lead character in theater, or movies, or shows,&#8221; says Hassan. &#8220;So for me, I wanted to have an opportunity to give other people a chance to see that type of character played out on a big stage.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Reality isn&#8217;t a one-way street. It&#8217;s multiple outlooks.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Continuing the theme of sophomores taking the lead with Sankofa, Abdulwahab Mohamed \u201922 of Lewiston was this year&#8217;s organizer, while Losseni Barry \u201922 of New York City was the scriptwriter and director. The theme, \u201cInvisible Women,\u201d featured stories of women of color at Bates and in Lewiston.<\/p>\n<p>Areohn Harrison &#8217;20 of Rockville, Md., plays a Mays College professor who leads his class in a wide-ranging discussion, starting with women in the civil rights movement and continuing to &#8220;how you assess value to a person in a society with varying levels of stratification based on race or gender.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_130318\" style=\"width: 1929px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-130318\" class=\"wp-image-130318 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048.jpg\" alt=\"Areohn Harrison '20 of Rockville, Md., playing a professor at mythical Mays College, leads his class in a discussion of race and gender. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)\" width=\"1919\" height=\"1279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048.jpg 1919w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048-900x600.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/01\/200120_MLK_Sankofa_0048-200x133.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1919px) 100vw, 1919px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-130318\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Areohn Harrison &#8217;20 of Rockville, Md., playing a professor at mythical Mays College, leads his class in a discussion of race and gender during Sankofa&#8217;s 2020 MLK Day performance. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Hassan notes how black women of the civil rights movement have been historically been &#8220;overshadowed, in a way, unfortunately. We know about Rosa Parks, but less about Ella Baker, Gwendolyn Simmons, or Doris Derby.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So this play is an opportunity to give another perspective, another lens for people to see, because reality isn&#8217;t a one-way street,&#8221; she says. &#8220;It&#8217;s multiple outlooks.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This setting of this year&#8217;s Sankofa show, presented on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, was the mythical Mays College \u2014 an intentional allusion to Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":130304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,30,130,31],"tags":[5283,10830,5709,7707],"class_list":["post-130303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-civic-engagement","category-collaboration","category-lewiston-auburn","tag-lewistons-somali-community","tag-lewiston-auburn","tag-martin-luther-king-jr-day","tag-sankofa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130303"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130376,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130303\/revisions\/130376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}