AWS to present ‘Ain’t I A Woman!’

The Southern University Association of Women Students will host, “Ain’t I A Woman!” a chamber music theatre work on Wednesday, Jan. 31 in the Cotillion Ballroom of the Smith-Brown Memorial Union. The event will take place at 11 a.m.
The “Ain’t I A Woman!” program will include lead actress Taylore Mahogany Scott and a trio of cello, piano and percussion, played by Tahirah Whittington, Hugh Hinton and Michael Parola respectively.
Scott has performed in other theatrical venues including New York Classical Theatre’s “Well That Ends Well” and “As You Like It” in addition to the American Globe Theatre’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
Her television and film credits include PBS’s “African American Lives” with Oprah Winfrey and Julie Taymor Productions’ “Across the Universe” among others. Scott received her degree in Biomedical Science for Veterinary Medicine and Theatre Arts from Texas A&M University and an MFA in Acting/Shakespeare from Florida Atlantic University.
“Ain’t I A Woman!” celebrates the life and times of influential African American women: ex-slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, renowned novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, folk artist Clementine Hunter and civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer.
The piece is in four scenes, taking place at intersections in each of the four protagonist’s lives and featuring many of their renowned words, such as “I have borne children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?” by Sojourner Truth, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired…We didn’t come all this way for no two seats!” by Fannie Lou Hamer and “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun’. We might not land on the sun but at least we would get off the ground,” by Zora Neale Hurston.
The music for the production is taken from spirituals of the Deep South in addition to the Jazz Age and contemporary African American concert music.
“Ain’t I A Woman” is written by Kim Hines, produced by The Core Ensemble and directed by Akin Babatunde.