Wiser With Age

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  • Betty Corwin receives Lifetime Achievement Award for archiving thousands of NYC theater productions

    Betty Corwin receiving her Lifetime Achievement Award at Sardi’s Restaurant in NYC on November 8, 2017. (Photo/Ellis Gaskell)

    Betty Corwin is going to turn 97 this month, but she says she still feels like a baby.

    “If you feel young, you are young,” says the native New Yorker, enthusiastically.

    This month was an extra special one for Corwin. She received the Special Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW) for founding the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT) in 1969. In 2001, she also received a TONY Award for her dedicated work.

    It was because of Corwin’s vision, and untiring effort, that TOFT has been filming and archiving video recordings of Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theater productions for nearly 50 years. The archive is located at New York City’s Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts and is open to the public.

    “There are over 8,000 titles now – shows, interviews, dialogues, and over 4,000 are theater productions, and it continues to grow,” says Corwin, proudly. “It’s considered the largest archive of its kind.”

    What’s perhaps most impressive about her extraordinary feat is that she only began this immense project when she was 50.

    “I got married in 1944, and my husband [a doctor] decided to practice in the country – so we moved to Connecticut,” says Corwin.

    She says it took her forever to get used to life in the country, but she did eventually. It’s there that she had, and raised, her three children.

    After they were grown, Corwin started to commute to NYC to volunteer in a psychiatric emergency room of a hospital. It was while filling out an application for a scholarship that she realized her true life’s calling.

    “I had to write a brief autobiography, and I found myself saying the most exciting time in my life was when I worked in the theater,” recalls Corwin, vividly. “When I was 20, I wasn’t married…I was a production assistant at the theater and script reader for three years.”

    Because of this revelation, the next morning, she went straight to Lincoln Center and told the head of the drama department her plan to make an archive of all theater productions.

    He asked, “What makes you think you can do this?”

    Corwin answered, “I can try.”

    He said, “I’ll give you a desk and a telephone and see if you can get it off the ground.”

    So, straight away, the unstoppable Corwin started calling foundations in order to get the money to fund her vision.

    “It was two and a half years just to get through the unions — I had to tackle them one at a time,” says Corwin, as if it were only yesterday. “I was persistent. I worked hard for it. Even when it was difficult getting union clearances, I pushed ahead.”

    Betty Corwin with the video tape recorders in Lincoln Center in 1998. (Courtesy Betty Corwin)

    She remembered literally walking into the offices of executives, after not getting callbacks, in order to get contracts signed. Sometimes it’d take up to an hour of convincing why the archive was necessary, but she says she wouldn’t leave until she got the signatures she needed.

    “Musicians have a lot of privacy rights. They didn’t trust anyone, or me,” says Corwin. “We finally had all the unions to be able to tape on Broadway, and I had also been raising money throughout…I did that for 31 years – getting up at 5:30am to catch the 7:31 train, and I loved what I was doing. I really did love what I did.”

    Corwin’s love for the theater began as a young girl. Her parents would take her to see shows on Broadway. It was then that the seed was planted, and she began feeling someone had to preserve these shows. Little did she know that person would be her.

    “I was always a spectator. I never acted,” says Corwin. “When you go to the theater, you’re lost in another world.”

    She says she also loves theater, because it can shed light on controversial topics happening in the world, like “The Normal Heart” – about the AIDS epidemic – which TOFT got to tape in 1985.

    Her favorite memory of her career was being able to watch a special finale of one of her favorite plays, “A Chorus Line” – which she says is also the longest running Broadway show.

    “The actors emerged from all over the theater,” says Corwin. “The orchestra and audience were in evening clothes. It was thrilling.”

    What thrills Corwin nowadays is seeing her beloved archive continue at New York’s prestigious Lincoln Center.

    “We have viewers coming from around the world,” she says. “I continue to work for the library, and I’m also on the jury for the Outer Critics Circle…I feel good.”

    What is her most important piece of life advice that she’d tell her 20-year-old self?

    “Just enjoy life and keep doing what you love. That’s the most important thing – to just keep going.”

  • Author Bob Brody on “Playing Catch with Strangers”

    Author Bob Brody on “Playing Catch with Strangers”

    Bob Brody speaking at his book signing for “Playing Catch with Strangers” at the Forest Hills Library on September 16, 2017. (Courtesy Bob Brody)

    In “Playing Catch with Strangers,” an essay published in The New York Times in 2015, Bob Brody writes that he played catch with his father only once in his life.

    “That summer afternoon, I felt about as happy as I’d ever felt. That’s how it goes when you’re 8 years old and playing catch with your dad,” writes Brody. “But then my father got busy with work, too busy to play catch with me anymore, always leaving early in the morning and returning late at night, and that turned out to be that. He had to do what he had to do.”

    Although short-lived, that special day ignited a flame in Brody’s life that would never extinguish – one that would continually remind him the importance of having fun and nurturing relationships throughout his life. In addition to becoming a public relations executive and a writer, Brody, now 65, still makes it his joyous duty to play catch with anyone who is interested.

    His memoir, comprised of the many personal essays he’s written throughout his life about family and special moments, is similarly titled, “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age,” and hit shelves this past June.

    “My new book covers my whole life…It’s a celebration,” says Brody. “It’s about my struggle to overcome immaturity. I resisted responsibility for a long time…It wasn’t until I was 35 [when my daughter was born] that I developed a real hard work ethic.”

    He says his whole life he’d only wanted to be a writer.

    “That ambition took shape when I was 12,” recalls Brody, who ended up writing for his junior high, high school, and then college paper. “My grandfather bought me a New York Daily News subscription so I could read about the Yankees. I appreciated the directness of the language. I really didn’t get serious about writing till I was 18 – in college. Writing for the school paper, I became infatuated with words. I was not much of a storyteller at that point. I was just looking to see what I could do with language. I used to use big words – words that I will probably never use again. I’ve come to recognize short words can be good, short sentences can be good…I like street language too.”

    He says if he had to do it all over, he really doesn’t know what else he could’ve become.

    “I guess I could’ve become a lawyer, but then I would’ve written about being a lawyer,” says Brody, smiling.

    Born in the Bronx, Brody lived there almost three years before migrating to the suburbs of Fair Lawn, NJ. He was always smitten with NYC, however, as he would often sleep over his grandparents’ house there, and his grandmother would take him to all the museums and concert halls, including Radio City Music Hall.

    At 23, after majoring in English at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he moved to Manhattan. This momentous occasion also led to his proudest career moment at 26 – getting published in The New York Times.

    “I wrote about the time I got mugged five weeks into living in New York City,” laughs Brody, who has since lived in Forest Hills, Queens for the past 40 years.

    Since his big break, Brody’s work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and more. He also wrote the book, “Edge Against Cancer,” which profiles 12 athletes who survived cancer and were able to return to competing in their respective sports.

    He says it was when his son and daughter were born that he realized he needed to find another source of income.

    “The only option I considered was public relations, because a lot of it is writing,” says Brody, who has now worked in PR for the past 26 years. “I majored in English, but I never trained for public relations. It was a tough adjustment, because for one, I was used to working on my own. I was used to being a solo act. When you work for a public relations firm, I had to learn how to be a teammate.”

    At his full-time job, he says his work partly entails writing pitches, ghost writing op-eds, white papers, or memos.

    “My ideal life would be to write whatever I wanted for at least three hours a day, but I think PR is good for me,” says Brody, adding that he usually enjoys writing first thing in the morning. “If I had to write only what I wanted, I might get sick of my own voice.”

    His first love will always be writing essays though. The very first short story he wrote was about a haunted house when he about 8, and currently, he writes approximately 20 essays a year.

    “I love telling a story that’s going to hit people where they live – make them smarter, or get them excited about something,” says Brody. “If I can write anything inspirational, that’s the holy grail. I also like the sense of control. It’s me and the blank screen. Me and the words, and how I want to tell the story. It’s fun to get published. I write to be read. All these years later, and I still never get tired of it.”

    He says his five year plan entails writing three more books — the first being called, “Letters to My Kids,” of which he already started an online blog (where he urges others to also write journals to their children), another would be a memoir honoring his deaf parents, and the last would be a memoir about working in public relations.

    “When I’ve written about something, I really feel like I’ve lived it,” says Brody about the necessity he feels to document his life with words. “I think I have much of it there in my new book– and it’s about the people closest to my heart.”

    There are two pieces of advice about life he’s learned thus far that he would’ve liked to share with his younger self:

    “On family – I wish I knew years ago what family means to me now,” says Brody. “I feel I failed early on to realize the importance of family. In some respects, I’m too late and in some, I’m just on time…and work harder. You have less time than you think. The world is never going to come to you so take nothing for granted.”

  • Charo at 66: New flamenco guitar album and prayers for Barcelona

    Charo at 66: New flamenco guitar album and prayers for Barcelona

    Charo (Photo/Jason Altaan)

    When asked for her full name, Charo is known to laugh in her cheerful manner and ask, “Do you have time?”

    The Spanish-American actress, comedian, and flamenco guitarist was born in Murcia, Spain, and her full given name is María del Rosario Mercedes Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza. Perhaps best known in the U.S. as the “Cuchi cuchi girl,” for her trademark expression she often says while wiggling her hips, her stage name “Charo” is a shortened form of her middle name Rosario.

    The exuberant entertainer became an American sensation in the 1970’s – appearing in countless television shows, including several episodes of “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “The Love Boat” and in the films, “Moon Over Parador” and “The Concord: Airport ’79.”  Although she is now 66, Charo’s energy and charisma have not simmered down. Earlier this year, she was on the 24th season of  ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” she will be performing in the Hollywood Bowl on August 27, and her next flamenco guitar album, “Guitar on Fire,” also drops later this month.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C3pgJRBzsU&feature=youtu.be

    “I am very excited, because it was one of my dreams to go to the Hollywood Bowl,” says Charo. “When I was a little girl, I saw a movie about a little mouse dancing at the Hollywood Bowl, and it was one of the best things I ever saw. I told myself if I ever go to America, I will play at the Hollywood Bowl.”

    She calls the show a challenge, because the audience will be international and comprised of different age groups, “but I know I can do it,” she says. “The guitar is my security blanket, and the music I selected is international.”

    Charo is used to performing anywhere. She moved to the Hawaiian island of Kauaii for approximately 15 years to raise her only son, Shel Rasten, away from the Hollywood life. Although, she still kept busy performing locally and even opened a restaurant called Charo’s. Since 2000, however, she’s been living in her Beverly Hills mansion with her husband and extended family.

    Ideally, Charo would start her day without an alarm clock.

    “Every day for me sucks, because I don’t like to wake up,” she says, although it’s hard to imagine her not radiating a constant joie de vivre. “I’m a night person, because I’m used to performing. Waking up is torture. I wake up at 8am, not because I want to. I play the guitar a little bit, then I run two miles, take a shower, then spend three hours minimum on the phone and making decisions.”

    Although she works a lot now, she says she would never want to go back to when she was 20.

    “It was work, work, work,” says Charo in a more serious tone. “My father was involved in politics, and we lost everything. There was no time to play. I grew up playing in casinos. I started performing professionally when I was 12.”

    World-renowned classical guitar master Andres Segovia taught her to play the guitar at a young age. She landed a role on the show “Villa Alegre” – Spain’s version of “Sesame Street” where she would sing “La Bamba.” When she was almost 15, the Spanish-American bandleader, Xavier Cugat, came to see the show and discovered her. Soon after, she joined his orchestra as a singer and dancer, and despite a 40-year age difference, they got married.

    “He talked to my mom and father,” says Charo of Cugat, her first husband. “I was very prepared when I came to this country. I practiced the guitar three hours a night. When I’m playing the guitar, I’m in another world, not in my “cuchi cuchi” persona.”

    In addition to playing the guitar, another topic close to her heart is taking a stand against one of her native Spain’s cultural past-times, bullfighting. She even adopted a bull she named Manolo.

    “I hate to watch the news, because I love people around the world,” she says. “I was born in Spain, but I consider myself a citizen of the planet Earth. I write my own comedy to cheer me up.”

    Regarding the recent terrorist attack in Barcelona, she says she is heartbroken.

    “I began praying for the victims right away,” says Charo. “I am sad for Spain, a beautiful country, full of joy, music and passion. I know Barcelona and Las Ramblas very well. It is like the United Nations there. You hear all the different languages and many people, including tourists, go there for fun…It saddens me to learn of the catastrophe they have suffered. I pray it never happens again. I believe the way to achieve world peace is for us to pray. Pray for each other. Pray for the planet. Pray for peace.”

    She does seem to know how to keep peace and love in her home, as she has been married 39 years to Swedish businessman Kjell Rasten, who is also her manager and the father of her son.

    “He produced the Golden Globe Awards when I was nominated with Carol Burnett. I did not win, but I got the producer,” Charo jokes.

    What does she say makes her long marriage successful?

    “Love, loyalty and respect, and having two separate bedrooms – his and hers,” she laughs. “Because 24 hours together, and you are going to get sick and tired of each other.”

  • Actor Ivonne Coll on playing the matriarch on ‘Jane the Virgin’ at 70

    Ivonne Coll (Photo\Starla Fortunato)

    Ivonne Coll is not a mother, or a grandmother, in real life, but she plays the role of both on television.

    Coll, otherwise known as Alba, plays the matriarch of her alternate reality home on The CW’s “Jane the Virgin.”  There, the Puerto Rican actor plays the Venezuelan grandmother of Jane (Gina Rodriguez), and the mother of Xiomara Villanueva (Andrea Navedo). Her main goal as head of that household is to try and steer Jane in the right direction. 

    “What I like about the show is how they portray Alba is that she is still sensual,” says Coll, adding that her character is also courageous and intelligent. “A lot of times abuelas are shown as always having an apron on and asking if you ate, but Alba is a dynamic woman who has a boyfriend and makes mistakes in life. The creators allow me to sing and dance – those are the opportunities that this show has allowed me to express.”

    In a way, the now 70-year-old actor is going back to her roots. At 20, while studying psychology at the University of Puerto Rico, Coll won the Miss Puerto Rico title, and in the same year, 1967, she represented Puerto Rico in the Miss Universe pageant – both of which required her to display her talents of acting, singing and dancing. Upon seeing her performing skills, a producer in Puerto Rico gave Coll her own variety show. But at 26, Coll decided it was time to move to Hollywood.

    Ivonne Coll in 1967 (Courtesy Ivonne Coll)

    “My mother couldn’t understand why I was leaving Puerto Rico, because I was so successful there, but I knew my calling was somewhere else,” says Coll. “I knew I had to study the craft of acting. I didn’t care about fame, or making it, or becoming a star, I wanted to become a working actor – that was my goal.”

    Little did she know, she says, that according to the standards of Hollywood, she was already considered “too old.”

    “But I didn’t know that, and when I was told about it, I didn’t care,” says the determined Coll. “I just thought, ‘Let me keep on growing and doing my craft.’”

    It was around this time in her life that she often didn’t have money for food or to buy bottled water, but nothing, not even not having money, would be an obstacle to accomplishing her dream. When she needed diction classes to make her spoken English clearer, she instantly thought of a creative solution.

    “I would clean the room for free lessons,” says Coll, laughing at this memory. “It was joyful. I never thought that I was struggling. I never thought I was paying my dues. It was a joy to do that work to get that session.”

    Shortly after, by a chance situation, she was hired to play the “redheaded singer, Yolanda” in Francis Ford Coppola’s, “The Godfather II,” which hit theaters in 1974.

    “It was around 2 or 3 in the morning, and Al Pacino came on the set to do the kissing scene, and that’s what it did it for me,” recounts Coll about the exact moment she confirmed she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life to acting. “As he walked to Fredo, watching the way he transformed. I thought, ‘How did he do that?!’”

    It was then that she started to train even harder.

    “I studied acting techniques for seven years, with Lee Strasberg, David Alexander, and Lucille Ball – who gave an eight-week workshop in Hollywood,” says Coll, adding that Ball was very strict and committed as a teacher.

    Throughout her career, Coll has starred on Broadway in “Goodbye Fidel,” and played Lady Macbeth in “Lady Macbeth,” and acted in the films, “Lean on Me,” and “Walking the Dead,” and has countless television credits, including “Switched at Birth,” and “Glee.” Yet no matter how many years and projects pass, she still calls her mother her biggest inspiration, role model and hero.

    “It’s all for Puerto Rico and my mother,” says Coll about Rosita Mendoza who was a celebrated hairstylist in Puerto Rico. “I think I inherited all my talent from my mother…Later in her life, she would be training – her talent for teaching is my talent for coaching others. That’s my mother – I’m so lucky. The last thing she saw me in was in Puerto Rican Parade in New York City when I won the Lifetime Achievement Award [in 2015]. She saw it on TV, and a week later she died.”

    Coll admits that as her recurring role as a mom in the television series,“Switched at Birth” was dwindling down, she started thinking about gracefully bowing out of show business and returning to her island home.

    “I didn’t think there would be more roles for me,” says Coll. “As I’m doing the paperwork needed to wrap up, I get the audition for this role at Jane the Virgin.”

    Not taking it seriously, she first told her agency she’s busy doing jury duty.

    “I was so confused, because the role was in Spanish in English, and the audition was the next day!,” says Coll.

    Once there, she asked the producers what kind of Spanish dialect they wanted. They said Venezuelan, which was a very easy transition from her native Caribbean Spanish.  

    “God decided that role was for me no matter how much I didn’t take it seriously,” says Coll. “When they called me to go to network, I turned off my phone, and I didn’t hear they cancelled the audition. So I went. And at the moment the casting director came in, and she said, ‘Abuela, we’ll see your tape.’ They didn’t answer until the next day. We were in parking lot when I got it. I was screaming in the car. It’s been a great ride.”

    She says working on “Jane the Virgin” has been one of her most special experiences, because her co-stars have become like true family.

    “It’s also the first time three Latinas are in a mainstream show, and now we have it in ‘One Day at a Time,’” says Coll about the Netflix series she will soon guest star on – reuniting her with Rita Moreno, 85, who played the “Glam-ma” on “Jane the Virgin.”

    Looking back now to when she once heard she was “too old” at 27, Coll laughs.

    “I just produced and co-wrote a short and I’m acting in it,” she says. “It’s about two women – one is a principal, and one is a yoga teacher and married to a Harvard professor…I want to put [Latinas] in charge like we are in real life…Producers feel it won’t sell, but it will sell, because it represents the face of North America.”

    What advice would she tell her 20-year-old self at her age now?

    “I wouldn’t change anything of what I did really…Go with your gut feeling. God lives in you. I was not aware that I was doing that. Be more aware of what moves you, because that will inform how your life will be.”

    “Alba, to me, has been a gift of love from God that came at a time I was about to retire. Isn’t it incredible?,” says Coll. “You can plan, but God has other plans, and His plans are better than yours.”

  • How writing her life story led a woman to inner healing

    How writing her life story led a woman to inner healing

    Maria Aponte (Photo/George Malave)

    Maria Aponte was born and raised an only child in East Harlem, otherwise known as “El Barrio,” in New York City, to Puerto Rican parents.

    Because she lost her mother at 16, and her father at 22, loneliness was a battle she fought most of her life, but it was also what made her the undefeated warrior and artist that she is today. And perhaps, the eternal yearning for parental guidance and wisdom, is what drove her to create a non-profit which honors elders later in life.

    At 60, Aponte has achieved much. She has written and performed two one-woman plays, the autobiographical “Lagrimas de mis Madres,” and “I Will Not Be Silenced,” based on the life of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. She has also written a poetry book, and a memoir, “The Gift of Loss,” which most recently hit shelves. In addition to working full-time in career development at Fordham University, she also started a non-profit called Latina 50 Plus four years ago, through which she honors other Latina pioneers over the age of 50.

    “I got the opportunity to tell my story in “Lagrimas de mis madres,” says Aponte about the play based on the women in her family, which she wrote during her undergrad years.

    Aponte performing in her one woman show, “Lagrimas de Mis Madres.” (Photo/Elena Marrero)

    She says the story came easily, because she wrote the script using the poetry she had written throughout her youth.

    “I wanted to tell this story, because I was the last woman in my family, and I thought it could help others,” says Aponte, adding that she knew her work touched the audience when people would wait in the lobby to thank her for her courage to tell her story. “Eventually, it became a full-length play on off-Broadway. I took it on the road for 10 and a half years around the country.”

    Because she was not the “typical looking Puerto Rican actress” of the time, she explains, like Rita Moreno – but more Afro-Latina in appearance, Aponte says she found she would get more work if she wrote plays herself. Her next play about Sor Juana de la Cruz, she also developed into a one-woman show and took it on tour around the country.

    “I was an introvert, and I think the arts saved me,” says Aponte, about how she dealt with the early death of her mother. “Even though it was painful, I was always able to use my art to deal with my pain.”

    She says she knew she was born to be an artist as young as age 7.

    “I knew I wanted to be in the theater ever since I was a munchkin in the school play, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ – I connected to the stage,” says Aponte. “I was jumping up and down one day, and I smelled dust from the wooden planks of the stage, and I loved the smell. My first influence was my drama teacher at 13 – I was learning lines and stage plotting…I knew then that I knew I would be an artist, and I always have been in some form.”

    She adds that her favorite medium will always be theater.

    “I love live theater,” says Aponte. “When I do a poetry reading, I end up performing…To me, it’s not just memorizing lines but developing character and taking the audience on a journey. I fell into the poetry thing in the 80’s, and that’s when I started writing more. My saving grace was the Nuyorican Poet’s Café. When I walked in, I felt like I was walking into El Barrio. That’s where I discovered my Puerto Rican pride, and where I connected with elders like Pedro Pietri.”

    She says she also learned a lot from the late Miriam Colon who was the founder and director of NYC’s Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.

    “My elders taught me about my history and my culture,” says Aponte, who moved to the Bronx in the 1980’s, where she still resides today with her husband and fellow storyteller, Bobby Gonzalez.

    Now that she’s older, she would like to return the same favor and be an example for the youth she encounters.

    Aponte has led a structured presence, in her otherwise diversified creative life, working full-time at Fordham University for the past 19 years. She has spent time in various departments, but has stayed in career services for the past 11 years – in the managing diversity initiative, and in 2014 she simultaneously completed her MA in Latino Studies.

    “I don’t think you should stay stuck,” says Aponte. “I love the life I live today. A typical month could also involve sitting on panels and supporting other artists’ work. My heart is in the betterment and development of women of color.”

    For herself, she realized how life growth happens in stages, over time, and she tries to teach that to others.

    “I was always telling my story in pieces. I have played my grandmother, mother, myself as a child, and as a woman,” says Aponte. “I would never address my father. My parents separated when I was two. My dad was actually not a bad person, just an alcoholic. He was a percussionist and could sing…but I never experienced him myself, just from what I heard from others. I wanted to write also about forgiveness.”

    Through her writing, Aponte says she has documented the amount of years it took her to become her own woman.

    “It is about coming to terms with who you are, and thinking, ‘Wow, I went through all that,’ she says. “I have a tremendous gratitude for life. Like right now as I’m speaking to you, I’m smiling.”

    She adds that most people don’t want to deal with emotion, but everyone has to at their own timing.

    “People say I’m so calm, but I say it’s a lot of work,” says Aponte. “The best I can do is plant a little seed.”

    Why she created Latina 50 Plus?

    “In the industry I work in, career development, I felt that older Latina women were disappearing,” says Aponte. “I felt I needed to create a space where their history wouldn’t be lost. We need to honor the elders who rolled up their sleeves before us.”

    Latina 50 Plus is a non-profit currently in its fourth year. The fourth annual luncheon, taking place on June, 24, will be honoring seven women in the fields of art, community service, education, medicine, law and literature.

    The next goal, she says, is a mentoring program.

    Her advice to her younger self?

    “Being a child caregiver, I would ignore myself,” says Aponte. “I had to really work hard on that. That’s how my brain worked. That could be your own obstacle…You have to have passion and persistence, because if you don’t, you can get swallowed up in the mundane stuff. You must discover yourself. Ask yourself, ‘Who am I?’ Everyone is going to have that moment. Don’t be afraid of it. Accept yourself with all of your imperfections. It’s ok if you mess up.”