Most people may not know the first woman of color elected to Congress, Patsy Mink, but those who attended a performance in the Great Hall on May 15 do.
The East West Players Theatre company brought Mink’s story to life on the Pierce College campus. She played a role authoring Title IX legislation and was an advocate for educational reform and women’s rights.
The East West Players, an Asian American theater in Los Angeles, were invited to campus as part of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
In the play, Kailani, a student athlete and high school senior whose dream is to play Division 1 basketball, is waiting to hear back from her dream school to see if she has been accepted. Mink is introduced when a framed picture of her comes to life and begins giving Kailani advice. Mink’s life story is then performed and shows her journey before and during her career.
Throughout Mink’s life, many people doubted her or thought that she was too good of a candidate and she would outshine her male counterparts. Mink went to school to study law, and experienced discrimination throughout her college career. When she arrived at her college, she was told that she would have to stay in the dorms, specifically for international students and students of color, which inspired her to start a petition to end these policies that were rooted in racism.
Director of Arts Education for East West Players Jade Cagalawan explained the process of the production and the inspiration for a show on Mink.
“It was going to be election season, so I thought, well, why don’t we do a show about her?,” Cagalawan said. “Also, at the time, I was seeing that colleges were rewriting their Title IX policies as well.”
Cagalawan hopes that the attendees will be able to take away messages from the play.
“Perseverance is everything,” Cagalawan said. “You can have a plan for how things are going to go, but you have to be open to change. There’s going to be a lot of things that will happen that’ll make you go in a different direction and that’s okay.”
She mentioned that this play can impact anyone, no matter the age.
“I think especially at the college level, when you’re trying college level, when you’re trying to figure out what major you’re going to be or what career you’re going into, that can be a really important message to hear,” Cagalawan said.
History professor Sheryl Nomelli, who teaches U.S. women’s history, attended the event and said it’s focused around the curriculum she teaches and she encouraged her students to attend the event as well.
“Anytime you can recognize some really key pieces of legislation that have helped women gain their representation and equality and equity in this country is super important,” Nomelli said.
Before collaborating in bringing the play to campus, Multicultural Center Coordinator Tatevik Melkumyan shared that she did not know much about Mink and that she was able to learn throughout the process.
“The most important thing that I learned about her was her perseverance and how she kept going and how you can relay that to any part of your life,” Melkumyan said. “The play did a really good job of showing the perspective of all the work she accomplished but also the perseverance that it took.”
