“I ain’t never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain’t nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.”
—AUGUST WILSON
I wanted to be a great actor like Miss Tyson. I wanted to talk like an actor and train like an actor. The process and artistry of piecing together a human being completely different from you was the equivalent of being otherworldly. It also has the power to heal the broken. All that was inside me that I couldn’t work out in my life, I could channel it all in my work and no one would be the wiser. And if I was good at it, I could make a life. It was perfect. All of it was a perfect alchemy for healing, acceptance, and
worthiness. Then Ron Stetson, a young actor and coach, came into my life when I was fourteen.
Ron Stetson was my acting coach in the federally funded program Upward Bound. For six weeks in the summer, I would live on a college campus and take classes. Usually there were forty-eight students from various communities in Rhode Island and from many different backgrounds.
Our classes started at 8 a.m. and ended around 5 p.m. The summer program was meant to mirror college so that we could learn how to make that transition from high school to college: the classes, living with people from different backgrounds, being on your own. We were all first- generation, higher-education-bound students. Our cohort was a mixed bag of college-bound kids, each with their own crosses to bear. Some had huge language barriers, others challenging family environments, and still others
with absolutely horrific stories of political abuse and genocide from their respective countries.
I loved Upward Bound. It gave me a jolt of perspective and grace about my family situation. Someone who spent four years living in a jungle or watching a parent get their head blown off by militia made my problems seem small. I know they weren’t, but it introduced me to the painful truth that everyone is going through something.
The evenings were free time until 8 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. So after dinner they gave us a choice of an extracurricular activity. Drama was one of them. In came Ron, who to me was the coolest, most handsome, unique,
dynamic individual I had ever met. He drove a beat-up car that had no door on the passenger side. Way cool. He put a sheet of plastic in its place so you wouldn’t fall out or get wet from the rain. He wore flip-flops, tank tops, and jeans. He was not only cool, he was different. He had different views of the world, people, race. He spoke his mind. In fact, all the counselors and teachers there did. They blew a hole in my world and opened up a new space that I could occupy.
Ron gave me two huge gifts that changed my life. The first happened during our first day in acting class. He asked all fourteen of us how many wanted to be actors.
We all raised our hands.
“You know you have to work fucking hard every fucking day,” he said. A fourth of the hands went down, but, I thought, Wow, that is awesome. “Every day,” he repeated.
More hands down.
“You can go on an audition every fricking day for six weeks and never, ever, get a job. You know that, right?”
More hands down.
My hand remained raised, as if reaching for the sky.
“And you’re gonna get rejected time and time and time again,” Ron continued.
I was the only one now who had my hand up.
He kept going at me. “You’re gonna get egg on your face. You’re gonna fail. Your family is not going to understand what you do and neither will most people.”
I kept my hand up, staring at him. When you haven’t had enough to eat, when your electricity and heat are cut off, you’re not afraid when someone
says life is going to be hard. The fear factor was minimized for me. I already knew fear. My dreams were bigger than the fear.
He stared at me. “Okay, let’s get back to class.”
The second gift Ron gave happened at our wrap party at his house. My sister Deloris, who was also in the class, was talking to me about some boy. I don’t remember what exactly she was saying to me but somewhere in there was a reference to us not being pretty.
He said, “Wait! You both don’t think you’re pretty? Why?”
We looked at each other completely embarrassed and laughed. I said, “Ron! No one in Central Falls thinks we’re pretty. We’ve never had boyfriends. We’ve never kissed anyone.” There was a very uncomfortable shift in the air.
“What?”
“Ron, most of the people in Central Falls are white and they just . . . we . . .” Deloris and I were at a loss for words.
“You both are fucking beautiful! I always thought that. You don’t see
it?”
The air in the room shifted again. Or was it the air in our lungs? It’s that
life-changing thing that happens when you’re seen, valued, and adored. Adoration for girls validates our femininity. When you are a dark-skin girl, no one simply adores you. They laugh with you, tell you their secrets, treat you like one of the boys . . . but there’s no care given to you, no devotion given to you. The absence of that becomes an erasure.
I learned so much from Ron that first summer of my drama training. He said, “Theater awakens the imagination.” Ah, imagination. The mind’s ability to create ideas and images. That’s what was injected in me when Ron stated with so much conviction, “You’re beautiful.” It opened up another space in my world where I actually could be anyone or anything I wanted to be. I could define my world in that space and piggyback to my world, stronger.
Like Wonder Woman spinning and transforming into this superhuman being that could bust through lies and beat down two-hundred-pound men. He gave me the first ingredient I needed to be an artist, the power to create. The power of alchemy, that magical process of transformation and creation to believe at any given time I could be the somebody I always wanted to be.
He also gave all of us something even more special: a sacred space where we could all share without shame or fear. A space where we could
share our deepest, darkest secrets and they would be received with love and empathy. He encouraged us not to hold it in, and man oh man, did he love it when we did anything bold, odd, unique. He would just exclaim loudly, “Fuckin’ look at that!”
I became an actor because it’s a healing wellspring.
Upward Bound was a melting pot of races. What we shared, besides all being desperately poor, was a passion to be the first generation in our families to get an education and be high achievers. In the evenings, when we were allowed to connect, the stories were bone-chilling. We were the Blacks, Whites, Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong, Vietnamese (then labeled “the Boat People”), Angolan, African Portuguese, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans. The Southeast Asians would primarily have stories of their entire family being slaughtered and escaping to the jungle only to have to live there for months, sometimes years, before finding a refugee camp, where some contracted malaria.
Most had language barriers or severe health concerns, but all were exceptional students. All had a willingness to share. It was the first place I knew where João, Phy, Vanna, Maria, Peaches, and Susie were on the same playing field. Suddenly, my stories of hardships seemed small, an awareness I felt God was orchestrating. I wanted my story to be small. I wanted it to shrink like a tumor down to a manageable size.
Drama provided an escape. The emotional release acting allowed gave me great joy. Perfect joy. When I was acting, I felt everything—every last receptor in my body was alive, 100 percent alive, and I was not hiding anything. I felt free to talk about all kinds of different shit when I was in a group with other actors. That’s why the most troubled students would always be put in drama class. Everybody vomits! Everybody is allowed to disclose their trauma, share their stories of horrific sexual and/or physical abuse, unmask really quirky humor, reveal their deepest, darkest secrets, everything. People listen with empathy, 100 percent on board, supportive.
But . . . but . . . then you have to go out into the world as you. You move through your life trying to retain the life force you had on that stage and in that class. Whoopi Goldberg, as the medium in the movie Ghost, had a talent to channel all these souls. Some were good and some weren’t. But regardless, she then had to come back to herself and her life. As an actor, you become a soul searcher. A thief. After the curtain call, you are left with you.
When I went to Upward Bound, I hadn’t wet the bed in over a year. I was so proud. But then, out of the blue, my first night of our six weeks on a college campus, I woke up and I was wet, shocked, ashamed, and said, “No one can come in this room.” I didn’t have a roommate, but there were suitemates, twelve little rooms in the suite. My room was probably 150, 200 square feet. I had gone to my room and proudly set it up with whatever I had, which was next to nothing. That was the last time I wet the bed. It pissed me off. I thought I had more control.
My lesson from Upward Bound was you have to open your mouth and own your friggin’ story. That terrified me more than rats.
