Finding Me: A Memoir

In order to save some money while living in New York, Viola has sublet a cheap, rent-stabilized apartment from Susan Lawson, the new creative director at Trinity Rep, without even seeing the place first. She trusted the place based on Susan’s background—an avant-garde director, the new artistic director at Trinity Rep, who would go on to head the theater program at Columbia University. However, when Viola opens the door for the first time, she finds a tiny, run-down place in abysmal condition, infested with mice. Viola calls Susan, who claims she has never had mice in the apartment before; nevertheless, Viola refuses to stay there beyond her first year. Despite loving the pace of the city, Viola longs for a space to come home to that keeps out the hardness of New York.

Viola begins Juilliard with 18 other classmates, but the first year ends with just 14 of them left. The program is hard, with a focus not only on what one does well, but also on what one doesn’t. Viola and her cohort receive rigorous training in speech, voice, technique, movement, and scene study. They are pushed out of their comfort zone, constantly made to take roles that are vastly different from their inherent strengths. What Viola finds the most difficult is how the school is focused on molding and shaping its students into the perfect white actors; there is barely any cognizance of a different kind of experience or sensibility. Out of a total of 856 students, there are only 30 Black students across all disciplines, including Viola. Together, they form the Black Caucus and hold their own celebrations for Martin Luther King Jr. Day every January. The students perform a variety show that includes all the art forms that the school does not otherwise allow its students to practice, the non-classical genres like jazz, gospel, modern, and ethnically derived material. Viola’s experience at Juilliard forces her to understand the power of her Blackness: She moves from having had to defend it throughout her childhood, to proving its worthiness in college, to now being angry about how Blackness is regarded at Juilliard.

In Viola’s second year, the school offers a $2500 scholarship for any student looking to do a summer program that would help them open up as artists. As part of the application, Viola writes a five-page essay in which she addresses the “burden and myopic scope of Eurocentric training” (165). She receives the scholarship and decides to travel to The Gambia in West Africa along with her friend and fellow student at Juilliard, Kris World. Kris is a dancer who travels to Africa every summer with Chuck Davis, an African dance choreographer, who takes groups of people to different African countries to study their dance, music, and folklore. The group that Viola is part of is all women, most of whom are not actors; they are traveling to The Gambia to study the Wolof, Jola, Mandinka, and SouSou tribes.

For Viola, Africa feels like love at first sight and causes a “cataclysmic change in [her] life” (166). The group wakes early every day and meets at the beach, where Chuck teaches them about African culture and they learn traditional dance moves. Everywhere they go, they are met with warmth from the locals. They are taught songs by the different tribes they interact with and witness the traditional dances performed by tribespeople. One of the songs that the Mandinka women dance to has lyrics that translate to “I did not come here for food. My stomach is full. I did not come here for food. I came for much more than that” (168). Viola recalls singing it so much that “it became a prayer. I was here for…something. I was crying out for something” (168). Witnessing the traditions, dance, and music of these West African tribes leads Viola to realize that Juilliard’s academic approach does not allow its students to connect their work to their loves, particularly for students like Viola with a specific racial, ethnic, and cultural history. Juilliard’s approach ignores the healing power that art inherently contains.

Viola returns from The Gambia fundamentally changed. She realizes that she has been training at Juilliard to lose her Blackness and erase herself, in order to create a craft that is steeped in technique. She constantly feels othered or on the outside when she tries to fit a mold rooted in an ideology of white superiority—derived from white classics and completely ignorant of other kinds of classical art forms or literature. Throwing off this burden, Viola begins to perform again like a new woman. A couple of years later, while still a student at Juilliard, she is approached by Mark Schlegel, an agent from J. Michael Bloom, the top agency at the time, representing actors like Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, and Sigourney Weaver. Viola signs with them even before she graduates, relieving her of the stress of auditions during her final year. Although she is told that she would have had more choices if she had waited, Viola is content with her decision: She wanted to work with an agent who sees and understands her, rather than just any agent. Viola is set for her life after Juilliard. Then one morning she wakes up feeling sick.

Viola finds out she is pregnant two weeks before her graduation from Juilliard; the baby is David’s. She ends up having an abortion, and David is not there for her. David thinks Viola made the wrong decision, but she knows that he would not have supported her if she had chosen to have the child. She was left with no financial or emotional resources to raise the child. From this experience, Viola learns that there is “absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars” (182).

After graduation, despite having a good agent, not much work comes Viola’s way. She goes for audition after audition, but nothing materializes, and she has two important realizations. The first has to do with privilege and choice: The actors who advise not settling for less than what one deserves and waiting for just the right roles are the ones who are already privileged. They can afford to say no to roles because they have other buffers or safety nets. Viola, and so many others like her, is simply trying to survive. With increasing health issues like fibroids, anemia, and alopecia, Viola struggles to earn enough to afford basic health insurance. Her second realization involves the dual impact of colorism and sexism in her field. Viola receives offers to audition only for the roles of drug-addicted mothers, and it is largely because of her appearance. Even Black romcoms do not see her as fit to play the lead role, as the producers are looking for lighter-skinned Black women. Viola reflects on how having choices about the kinds of roles one accepts is a function of privilege. Among the many people aspiring to be actors, most don’t make it, and not because of a lack of talent or hard work. So much comes down to a combination of luck, relationships, and chance; that is the nature of the business.

Viola eventually gets a call to audition for a role in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, to be directed by Lloyd Richards and ultimately be showcased on Broadway. She wants the role desperately and even performs off-book (without a script in hand, having memorized the lines) for the audition. When she gets the call that she is in, she is thrilled. The play is a long-haul experience, as they travel across the country performing in multiple places before finally presenting on Broadway. When the show arrives in Los Angeles, a number of celebrities come out to see it, including the likes of Halle Berry and Angela Bassett. The experience of being on Broadway is a heady experience for Viola; for her, “it lives up to every bit of [her] dream” (194). Her parents come out to watch her perform, and they are left crying and clapping as the show comes to an end. Viola’s agent tells her that she has "great parents”—unlike other stage parents, they just want to see Viola succeed and be happy. Viola suddenly sees her parents in a completely different light.

The play is a great experience and a huge part of Viola’s growth as an actor; it lands her her first Tony nomination. She also receives other nominations, including the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Drama Desk, the Drama League, and the Theatre World Awards for Outstanding Broadway Debut; she goes on to win the latter. Despite the joy in Viola’s life during this period, a number of other hardships continue. Danielle has her first child at 17, despite all her sisters’ attempts at keeping her out of trouble. She goes through a rebellious phase that culminates in a teen pregnancy. John, too, has had two children by now, the first of whom was born with extreme withdrawal symptoms because the baby’s mother used cocaine while pregnant. Dan changes considerably after the birth of his grandchildren: While the drinking continues, the rages stop altogether. He and Mae gain custody of John’s children, and Dan’s focus shifts to raising the children and helping Mae out as best he can. Viola helps out financially, but her family’s needs continue to grow in intensity, stretching her means. She wonders when she will be able to fully enjoy her life.

Viola lands a role in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Out of Sight; it is a small role as the girlfriend of Don Cheadle’s character. Nevertheless, it is more money than she makes in theater, and she is thrilled to receive it. Other roles follow, including in the HBO move The Pentagon Wars, and she finally makes enough money for health insurance. Viola begins therapy, and she also manages to have her fibroids removed. The latter leaves her with a very small window to get pregnant before she is rendered infertile, but this is not an option as she has no significant other in her life.

While working on one of her later projects, A Raisin in the Sun, a castmate, Joseph Edward, asks her why she does not have a partner in her life, and Viola honestly answers that she does not know. He urges her to get down on her knees and pray, and to present God with a list of what she wants in a partner. Viola heeds his advice and tells God that she wants “a big, Black man who was an ex-athlete, preferably a football player”; “someone real country”; someone who has “had a wife before me and children already”; someone who believes in God “because then he will be accountable to someone”; and someone who is “emotionally available and understand[s] what I do as an actor” (212-13). Even as Viola continues to work, moving to Los Angeles to shoot City of Angels, she feels tired; she now wants to find a home, a place that is "peaceful, nurturing, reliable…and filled with love” (214).