Following auditions, Viola begins a six-week summer program at Circle in the Square in New York City. She receives $1200 through a grant and works in factories and telemarketing to afford the rest of the program and housing in the city.

Viola thrives at Circle in the Square, and New York pushes her out of her comfort zone. She receives some of the best acting training in her life, working under a number of teachers in the program; however, she professes Alan Langdon to have been the best of them all. Alan does not have the usual flamboyance one associates with theater people but practices a quiet, intense observation. Viola befriends another participant named Emily, a nervous-looking young woman with a soft voice who claims to have joined the program not to be an actor but to heal from something. During one session with Alan, Emily is required to act out a scene in which her character is pinned to a wall and yelled at. Instead of yelling back her own dialogue, Emily’s voice comes out in a whisper. Alan repeatedly asks her who took her voice, to which Emily finally emotional responds that when she was nine years old, her father used to hold her down on the bed and beat and rape her, covering her mouth.