Our final character to take a look at is Annie Cannon, the feminist and suffragette extraordinaire. The real life Annie Cannon was just as incredible as the image of her painted in Silent Sky. She was the eldest of three girls to state senator and shipbuilder Wilson Cannon and his wife Mary Jump. Her parents both encouraged her to pursue astronomy; her mother taught her the constellations and her father built a makeshift observatory in their attic. She studied physics and astronomy at Wellesley, graduating in 1884 and later returning to take graduate classes in spectroscopy. She joined the Harvard Observatory in 1896 where she created the OBAFGKM classification and eventually became curator of astronomical photos.

Laighton Cain is the actress who has taken on the daunting task of filling the shoes of Annie Cannon in CofC’s production of Silent Sky. As a self-proclaimed feminist herself, Laighton seems like the perfect fit for this role. When asked about why this play is important to perform now, she was quick to discuss the recent women’s marches (Laighton attended the one in Washington). She mentioned Annie’s suffragette sash with the proud phrase “Votes for Women” and how women at the 2017 march had similar sashes, but boasting things like “Healthcare for Women” and “Equal Rights for Women. Laighton gushes over the similarities, saying, “that’s part of the reason Annie Cannon is so inspiring to me, is that we are still able to experience the same things that she experienced.”

It’s not difficult to see the resemblance between Laighton and Annie, but Laighton mentioned her schooling as a part of what shaped her. She attended an all-girls school and notes she was “raised to believe was that women are just as powerful as men. Women are capable of just as much, if not more, in different ways.”