Bobby, look for a thin woman with huge expressive eyes done in black kohl-- kind of a cross between Alice Cooper and Nefertiti. Her hair was always done up in a large and loose Gibson Girl meets Geisha coiffure. She always wore black but would find some costume fragment, usually on the floor of the dressing room-- some discarded feathers, a beaded or glittering thing-- that she would work into a stunning and unique shawl. That's Ann.
As I remember her now, she was somewhat older than the rest of us then-- somewhere in her thirties, whereas we were in our early twenties.
And yet there was never the sense that she was anything but our peer. It's as if in all of that glamorous madness and with all of these children she had found a home. But surely that is how so many of us felt.
Don't get me wrong. There were many who were older-- Ethyl and Madame, for instance-- and we always treated them with that certain respect as ruling elders. But Ann... well she was just one of us kids. Quite an exceptional attitude for her to project, now that I, having become one of those elders, look back on it.