The order of the work
Five things, in the order a student meets them: a stage to reach for, a coach, a pathway the state recognizes, the gear, and the teachers who make it stick.
The Stage
Producing and presenting culturally significant Black and Creole theatre for Acadiana audiences: work with weight, staged with care, held to Annie Will’s standard.
Competition coaching
ACT-SO and Shakespeare preparation for students across the eight Acadiana parishes: monologue work, audition technique, mock adjudication, and the discipline of preparing a piece to a standard.
Know How to Do
The flagship. The pathway to Louisiana’s Talented designation in Theatre: students found through the competitions are walked toward state identification, and students already identified get somewhere serious to keep training.
Equipment and technical support
Sound, lighting, and production gear for school and community programs that cannot buy their own, with an operator who knows how to run it.
Teacher development
Sessions for theatre teachers and teaching artists on identification, portfolio preparation, and repertoire.
Spring 2027
ACT-SO Lafayette
The NAACP’s Olympics of the mind and the arts, back in Lafayette for its second year. A program of the NAACP Lafayette Branch.
actsolafayette.org2026–27 season
ESU National Shakespeare Competition, Acadiana
The region’s first regional, run by Annie Will’s Daughter with the English-Speaking Union’s national office. Free for students; the national finals are at Lincoln Center, April 26, 2027.
acadianashakespearefestival.org
The name
Annie Will Bell Gatlin had a phrase for the way she moved through the world: you gotta know how to do. It meant adaptability: learn every room, even the ones that were not built for you, and carry yourself ready, so that when opportunity shows up it finds you prepared.
She passed that standard to her daughter, Twana Benoit. Twana passed it to her son, Josiah Price, who grew up to make theatre with his mother and now directs, teaches, and produces across Louisiana.
This foundation is his gift to his mother, made in his grandmother’s memory. Annie Will’s daughter raised an artist; Annie Will’s creed will now raise many more.
Her own hand
Annie Will woke to pray at 4AM. In the last entry of her prayer journal, a Sunday morning in March of 2020, she prayed over her children, her grandchildren, and “even those who are not here yet.” Two of her lines sit at the center of this work:
“Stir up the gift in their life you have given them.”
“If they fall, give them the courage to get up again.”
That is the whole job, said plainly, before we ever thought to say it. This foundation exists to stir up the gift, and to be the room where getting up again is expected of you and made possible for you.
“You gotta know how to do”: craft you can stand on, readiness that meets opportunity, and the wit to navigate a world that was not built for you.
Build with us
Annie Will’s Daughter is newly organizing as a Louisiana nonprofit corporation and will seek federal 501(c)(3) recognition. Until that recognition is granted, gifts are not tax-deductible.
If you want to be part of the founding, as a teaching artist, a partner, or an early supporter, we would be glad to hear from you.
Annie Will’s Daughter is an affiliate of the Arts Education Partnership, the national network for arts education housed at the Education Commission of the States.