Throwback Thursday! When Viola Davis and I shared a Newspaper page.

A little Blast from the past-- I guess this is a Throwback Thursday!

I was going through some old publicity articles and happened on this RIC Alumni Magazine from 2001.

I had saved it because I was just doing a set of workshops as the Clown Laureate of Greenbelt Maryland, and got featured in the Alumni Magazine (I have a graduate degree from RIC/Trinity Rep Conservatory, which is now the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. )

While the article is, of course, interesting, and I'm glad to have it,  I was more struck of course by the article that shares space on my page, about now Academy Award winner Viola Davis, who is above the fold, but doesn't have a photo on the front page.

I'm hoping those weren't my glory days, but for a brief moment, I was on par with Viola Davis!

What a difference 15 years makes! If this were being done now, I would be a tiny footnote, and Viola would be both pages!

And you can see that even back then, Viola was working hard, appearing on Broadway, doing television, and even when she was at RIC in 1988 she used her solo show as a fundraiser for the very good program Upward Bound, which is still going strong.

(Also of interest is a photo of Hilary Clinton on the back page, who met with the RIC Women's Gymnastic team in 2001.  And on the front page,  Nehassaiu Degannes, representing for African American History Month, who I worked with many years later on (I think) The Manton Avenue Project, and is also a graduate of Trinity Rep (although I think she went when it was the Consortium-- I'm a little older than she is)

Click Photo to view Larger - or get the whole PDF

Click Photo to view Larger - or get the whole PDF