Practice

Practice draws on the remarkable story of Annie Oakley, one of the biggest stars of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Joining the show at twenty-five, the five-foot-tall sharpshooter known as “Little Sure Shot” astonished audiences for fifteen years with feats that included extinguishing a candle flame, splitting a playing card on its edge, and shooting a cigarette from a target’s mouth. Her skill had begun far from the spectacle of the Wild West. Growing up poor in rural Ohio, Oakley hunted rabbits, squirrels, and birds to help feed her family. The marksmanship she developed out of necessity eventually made her world-famous—and, according to the gallery’s notes, the show’s second-highest-paid performer after Buffalo Bill Cody.