Gianna Imbronone

Gianna Imbronone, about to celebrate her four year anniversary of moving up north, reflects on joining the local theatre community in Traverse City. Imbronone majored in theatre at Western Michigan University but made different career moves post-graduation. “I studied theatre and worked part-time as a waitress while in school and acted in all of my free time. After I graduated from college, I moved to Chicago and acting quickly fell by the wayside, because I started bartending in Wrigleyville during Cubs season and started making a lot of money, and decided that being a starving artist didn’t seem like as much fun anymore. So I put acting on the back burner and started bartending and bar managing,” Imbronone said. She then found herself back in Michigan after five years in Chicago. “I moved back to Michigan when my dad got sick and I had to take care of him, and during that time I was trying to get a better job than just bar-tending. I was offered a full-time job as a distributor with a promotion and a move to Traverse City, so they moved me up north,” Imbronone said. After years away from the theatre, her friends convinced her to audition for a community theater after her move to Traverse City. “I researched local places like P45 Theater and Riverside Shakespeare and of course the Old Town Playhouse, and I promised my roommate I would audition for the next show. The auditions for Mary Poppins at the playhouse turned out to be the next day, but I am a woman of my word; so I practiced my music all day and printed a resume and headshot. When I got there everyone was surprised at my professionalism, but that’s how I was taught in school,” Imbronone. She ended up doing multiple shows at the Old Town Playhouse including ‘Mary Poppins’, ‘Annie the Musical’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and got a full-time job as a realtor and flips houses.

identity traverse city in

by: OLIVIA HALE staff writer

In our spin-off of Human of New York, the Black & Gold Quarterly went out into the Grand Traverse community in search of uniquity. Our mission was to find inspiring stories and share them to encourage self-expression. Through a variety of randomly selected people, we were about to find one commonality: passion. Stories like theirs are what makes us believe in the power that comes from expression through journalism. People are art. We feel combining their words with a visual story, a unique and inspiring message is created. Members of our community have conveyed their identities and inspired us through their words and sense of passion. To us, this is the truest kind of journalism--finding moving stories and sharing them.

Ed Roth, the owner of Roth Shirt Company, has lived in Traverse City for 35 years. “I am originally from Midland, but like a lot of people who grew up downstate, we came up here on the weekends and fell in love with the area. I have lived here and raised my family here,” Roth said. His father was in the chemical safety business but he chose a different path. “My dad worked at Dow like everyone else who lived in Midland, but I design t-shirts. They are different and unique and expressive,” Roth said. His t-shirt business was started with hopes to spread joy vie the shirts he creates. “My goal with this business is to lift up customers’ lives, life up employees’ lives as they come through here, and be a positive part of the community. That is my main goal with the business and as I go on through life I have learned it’s more about how I can impact others positively, rather than accomplishing things for myself. I think that lifting people other uplifts me up, too,” Roth said. Roth based his company in the Traverse City community to get to know it better and connect with it. “We have had a bunch of employees even from Central High. It is really cool to have such a tight-knit community here and local employees who are passionate about the area. I put my heart and soul into the designs and some of them reflect local things, like our ‘mushroom hunter’ shirt and ‘rock hunter’ shirt. People do notice the individual feel that I put into them and it makes me feel good,” Roth said. Ed Roth Kali Svec, a Traverse City native, works two jobs in downtown Traverse City to save up for film school. “I like doing art things, a lot of my friends are in the art and film community too. I am really into television, and I originally wanted to grow up and do that and I still do want to work in television or film. Right now I work at two places downtown just to save for that future,” Svec said. The 2011 Central High School graduate found her aspiration for working in film production while in high school. “Mr. Filkins actually was my favorite teacher I ever had at Central and he was the teacher that got me into film and media, I took video production with him,” Svec said. In the long run, however, Svec dreams of moving from Traverse City to Detroit and eventually out West. “I am still here in Traverse City and I like it here. It has definitely grown a lot since I graduated from high school and I have met a lot more people and the art community has gotten a lot bigger here, especially with the film fest, it just gets a lot more attention. I have definitely thought about moving to Detroit for job opportunities, and eventually I do want to move out to California, that’s like my dream but for now I just like watching Traverse City grow,” Svec said. Kali Svec Photos: O. Hale