Jan Goldsmith
Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who participated in a network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad, stood on the stage alone talking about her life. “On my underground I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,” she said proudly.
Portraying Tubman was Annette Hubbell, an author and actress who depicts historical figures in a unique way — alone on stage through first-person accounts of their lives.
“The power of storytelling can bridge gaps and foster understanding,” she explained. “True stories can teach us, motivate us and inspire us.”
She does it because she enjoys “being” those she portrays and communicating who they really were.
Hubbell has conducted extensive research on each of her historical figures and uses their actual words as much as possible.
“My stories are true,” Hubbell said. “I write what they actually said.”
It took Hubbell more than five years to write the 230-page book that includes 41 pages of footnotes. Research took up most of the five years.
“I used the internet, source documents, biographies and autobiographies, interviewed experts and visited sites,” Hubbell said. “Accuracy was extremely important.”
Her performances have received positive reviews over the years. A trailer of her work can be found at:
www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=K42l-ULMRqU
“The captivating artistry of Annette Hubbell is absolutely unique. Her talents on stage draw audiences into the amazing worlds, varied time periods and fascinating lives she re-creates. Annette may be consistently counted on to be accurate, educational and thoroughly entertaining,” wrote Wayne Scott, President of LifeHouse Theater in Redlands.
“I’ve found myself a niche,” Hubbell said. “There are not many people doing this.”
Born in 1948 and raised in San Diego, Hubbell has never taken acting lessons or even acted until 2009. She has a bacheor’s degree in marketing from San Diego State and an MBA from Cal State San Marcos. She began as a secretary at Fotomat and worked her way, through education and experience, to become general manager of a water district.
In 2007, Hubbell and her husband, Monte, since deceased, traveled east on a vacation and attended a re-enactment performance near Gettysburg. That gave her the idea to take up acting.
“I wrote some of my lines in shorthand on my palm for my first performance,” she recalled.
Today, Hubbell, 75, lives in Poway and is retired except for acting.
She performs Women Warriors, where she portrays historical figures from her book. Each portrayal is 20 minutes in length, which allows her to tailor performances to the times allotted.
Her only negative experience occurred when she was scheduled to perform March 21 three requested historical figures, including Harriet Tubman, at a local library.
Two weeks before the engagement, Hubbell received a request to change the performance. “I am sorry for asking this request at such short notice, but our administration was uncomfortable with you performing a Black character as a White woman,” wrote a library administrator.
Hubbell refused, and the library canceled her performance.
“I was quite taken aback,” Hubbell said. “Since I’ve been performing these characters, there has never been a hint of offense, even from anonymous surveys. And why should there be? Am I only to honor White women? How could we ever explore our common humanity with these kind of restrictions?
“I did not choose them for their station in life, their gender, their ethnicity. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I chose them solely for the content of their character.”
Following this experience, Hubbell said she may begin portraying men depicted in her book. “Maybe some good can come from this. It opened my eyes.”