Senior Brings Her Family's Experiences to Life on the Hutchison Stage

Ann Marie Gaines’ family roots are never far from her mind. Asked about her favorite role out of the many plays she has performed in at Hutchison, she says M’Lynn Eatenton, the matriarch in Steel Magnolias.

“She was going through a lot. She was a very emotional character, and I thought it was beautiful,” said Ann Marie. “It reminded me of my grandma in a lot of ways.” Meanwhile, her great-grandmother inspired the title of her myExperience production, Mommy Ann’s Rosebush. “She has rosebushes outside her house, so I thought it was a nice ode to my own family tree,” she said.

That family tree consists of many impressive branches, including her grandmother, the first Black woman to graduate from Georgia Tech’s business school, and the family’s long line of engineers that followed. 

This focus on achievement is at odds with how Ann Marie says Black women are often relegated to a limited set of roles in the media. 

“Black women are complex individuals, and I wanted to show that through the monologues,” she said.

Drawing Confidence from Teachers and Classmates Alike 

Ann Marie never wavered from her premise for this project. It checked all the boxes in the framework for myExperience projects at the Institute for Responsible Citizenship: she was exploring broad community issues via interests that were near and dear to her heart. Actually, there’s the rub. Was this exercise TOO close to home? 

The projects challenge girls to dig deeper and expand on individual interests and talents, such as technology, medicine, public spaces, or sustainability. Putting your great-grandmother’s experiences out there for all to see is a whole new level of digging deep. 

Ann Marie says she is not intimidated by having to perform on stage, but laying out her family’s personal history gave her pause. Her Hutchison support system stepped in and got her through it. Her topic was the subject of several discussions with others in the art and design cohort. Ann Marie said she felt vulnerable at times, and she appreciated her classmates’ and teachers’ support. 

"Something I was really worried about with my project is what will people think? I am writing about something that is so openly Black and female," she said. "I worried about how people would interpret my work."

The capstone myExperience project is a self-directed exercise that gives girls leeway, but plenty of adults are part of the process. As the performing arts director and a faculty lead of the myExperience art and design cohort, John Michael Joiner was very involved overall, and theater technical director Braden Harrington handled all the technical support. Middle school theatre teacher Jay Rapp was literally hands-on. He helped with stage design, going as far as painting the stools Ann Marie used as she smoothly transitioned between the “teens” over the years. 

Community professionals from all walks of life generously give of their time and talents to mentor the girls on their journeys. In Ann Marie’s case, it is Leslie Reddick, the middle school performing arts teacher at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal School and a local playwright. Reddick played many roles in this initiative, but “punctuation patrol” seemed to loom large for both her and Ann Marie. Both agree that Reddick is the reason the monologues had commas and periods.

On a more serious note, Ann Marie said Reddick helped her envision what’s possible as she weighs her college options after Hutchison. "It was really nice to talk to a professional who was so passionate about the career,” she said. “It's truly helped meeting another Black woman in the theater community. Just having that representation in art makes it feel like I can be honest with her and explicit with her, and she'll understand what I'm saying.”