Monday night's performance at Kresge Auditorium was certainly more than entertaining. It was a called-for break from the everyday hustle of college life.
In fact, to label "A Story of a Rape Survivor" (SOARS) as mere entertainment would undermine the overall power of the evening's multimedia presentation which documented the experience of a rape survivor. As part of Sexual Awareness and Assault Week, the event was sponsored by Safe Space, BWA, the Counseling Center, the Women's Resource Center, the departments of Sociology and Women's Studies, and the office of Residential Life.
The hour-long presentation featured photo slides, music, sound clips, testimonial voice, and movement to depict the journey from being a rape victim to being a rape survivor.
SOARS is the main program of a non-profit organization called A Long Walk Home, founded by Salameshah Tillet, her sister Scheherazade Tillet (pronounced Shahara), and Solomon Steplight, who is the technology advisor. What started out as a class presentation became a national organization for a cause.
What made the multifaceted presentation striking was its ability to document the story of a rape survivor and what Tillet called her "process of healing" from the perspective of her own sister who is a freelance photographer in Chicago. Through a series of mediums, Scheherazade Tillet was able to take us on a journey that began with Logan Vaughn conveying discomfort through various movements and expressions rooted in ballet and modern dance. She seems upset, and we don't know exactly why.
The story unfolds with sound clips of Tillet's voice narrating her story while shifting back and forth to dance "clips" meant to convey a particular state of emotion and a progression from being a victim to a survivor. By the end, the dance movements convey joy, and realization as posed with a smile that almost took away from the rest of her eclectic and precise sways.
For Tillet, this is a story of the aftermath of two separate assaults that occured first as a freshman and then as a junior at an undergraduate institution. It is a story of the process of healing and what it entailed for Tillet. "My journey is ongoing," said Tillet in an assertive yet calm voice, as she introduced the following segment of photographs backgrounded by Sade's "You Didn't Suffer in Vain."
We saw, for example, pictures of a ritual bath to honor the Yoruba goddess of water and sensuality. Then we see a picture of a sticky note that says "Replace all bad thoughts" offering the audience a private and personal take that your average documentary couldn't achieve. And therein lay the power of the presentation: the insider's perspective motivates awareness of rape and different forms of sexual abuse and assault. "It's hard to photograph a spiritual process," said Tillet as she stood by her sister, answering questions from the audience.
While the slideshow offered moments of pause and reflection, it also relied upon the songs in the background a bit much (you either feel the music or not). The presentation relied on rape statistics such as "every two minutes, a woman is sexually assaulted" or "one in three women will be sexually assaulted within her lifetime" and finally, "one in four college women have been the victim of rape or attempted rape during her college years." Tillet, whose mother was also abused when she was younger, was assaulted for the first time during a college party, and then again while she was studying away in Kenya.
At Bowdoin College, sexual assault as a theme is either taboo or "p.c."-fied, and the presentation offered the audience a first- and second-hand account on the process of "rape healing," almost entirely devoid of the kind of omotion that can get in the way of accurately depicting a problem that is as much social as it is private.
Instead, the presentation zooms into the string between Tillet's mind and heart offering a suggestion, a procedure of progress if you will of the particulars of her ongoing healing process, leaving the witness wholly unaware of the kind of soreness that Kresge's seats may leave on the buttocks.