Wiser With Age

Tag: New York

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


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    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.â€

    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.â€

    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?â€

    Corwin answered, “I can try.â€

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

    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.â€

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    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.â€

    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.â€

    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.â€

    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.â€

    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.â€

  • A Greek immigrant tells stories to bring people together

    A Greek immigrant tells stories to bring people together


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Barbara Aliprantis (Photo/ Kaitlyn Elphinstone/ Cayman Cultural Foundation)

    Barbara Aliprantis jokes that she started listening in utero. She was born with a superb memory, an expressive voice, and a vivid imagination – the recipe for the perfect storyteller.

    “I remember the day I left the fishing village of Paros, Greece, when I was two and a half, as though it were yesterday,†she says. “I was on a donkey and my sister was on another donkey…my mother was crying – everyone was crying – that image stayed with me all my life.â€

    It was 1937 when Aliprantis left her native island in the Aegean Sea with her mother, brother, and sister, to join their father in New York.

    “I found myself in a neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn…I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood,†says Aliprantis, explaining her Jewish-NY accent.

    Her immigration story was the first she ever told. It all started when her first grade teacher asked her to introduce herself, and her different background, in front of the class – and she’s been telling that story ever since.

    “I didn’t even mind an audience even then,†she says, laughing. “I loved to tell stories and put on a show at the drop of a hat, and I’m doing that now. A teacher affects your eternity. It’s so important to let children know it’s good to be different.â€

    Aliprantis did not know at the time that telling her story would eventually lead her to becoming a professional storyteller who would produce workshops and events, in voice and sign language, in theaters, schools, libraries, community centers, and festivals all over the country.

    “I have worn many hats in my life,†she says about her life before professional storytelling. “Being a Greek girl growing up in a Flatbush, Brooklyn [in the 1950’s] I [was expected to be] a nurse or a secretary. Three months into nursing training at Brooklyn College, I decided it wasn’t for me. I went to business school to study typing – it was probably the saddest part of my life.â€

    She then went to business school for six months, while what she really wanted was to get a job in show business.

    “My first interview was at CBS,†recalls Aliprantis as if it were yesterday. “I was so nervous, I failed the typing test.â€

    She says she ended up getting a job at a corporation working for six men.

    “Being a girl of the ‘50s – oh my God – it was whatever they wanted,†she says about the job that paid $85 a week – enough to pay the rent for her apartment in Queens. “It was a different time.”

    Aliprantis married at 21, and 10 years later – in 1968 – she quit her job and went to Greece to adopt a baby boy. Three years later, she gave birth to a son. She says it was one of her dreams to be a mother – so she decided to stay at home and dedicate her time to raising her two boys.

    In 1980, when her boys were bigger, she took a full-time position as a storyteller at a school for the deaf in the Bronx.

    “I fell in love with it immediately,†says Aliprantis. “I started learning sign language on the job. I loved it. It changed my life.”

    After 10 years there, she left to work with high schoolers in Queens.

    “I will be forever grateful to the students and staff at both schools who taught me new ways to listen to the world and tell my stories,” says Aliprantis.

    Back in 1985, while working at the school for the deaf, she had enrolled in Queensborough Community College to finally study acting and theater production - what she had always wanted to pursue as a young girl.

    “I was the oldest one in the class, and the only one who did all the assignments,†says Aliprantis, who two years later enrolled in SUNY Empire State College and graduated in record time. “I got 89 life experience credits, and graduated in a year and a half with a BA in the performing arts and concentration in sign language and performance.

    After graduation, Aliprantis taught an introductory course in sign language communication and storytelling at QCC for almost 30 years. Throughout the 1990’s she was a member of QCC’s Professional Theatre Residency Program and co-founded a not-for-profit community organization called the American Center for Theatre and Storytelling – now called the New York Story Exchange.

    “In 1997, I established the Second Tuesday of the Month Evening Series at the famous Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village,” she says. “It is the longest running evening series for adults in NYC.”

    The program entails three featured tellers, plus ‘Open Telling’ for three or four volunteer tellers to share a 5-minute story.

    “The biggest misconception about storytelling is that it’s just for children,†says the woman who was honored at NY City Hall for her work. “It brings people together.â€

    What advice about life would she tell her younger self if she could now?

    “Nothing is ever lost,†says Aliprantis.†Everything happens for a reason. Every obstacle is for a reason. Sometimes the reason doesn’t reveal itself until later on.â€

  • Cooking With Granny: Russian stuffed peppers

    Cooking With Granny: Russian stuffed peppers


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Caroline with Russian granny Nina Iskin.

    As grandma Nina Iskin teaches us how to make stuffed peppers, we also learn her war-torn tale – how she came to survive the Siege of Leningrad during World War II, the deadliest siege in military history, and eventually immigrate to New York City with the help of former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George Bush. Watch below!

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.Caroline Shin is a multimedia journalist based in NYC. Recently, she launched “Cooking With Granny†– a Web series in which grandmas teach how to cook traditional dishes from their cultures while simultaneously sharing their funny, sad and surprising experiences with immigration and multiculturalism in a world that’s very different from today’s. Shin was previously a video editor at New York Magazine and holds an M.A. from Columbia Journalism School.

  • Cooking With Granny: Greek octopus stew

    Cooking With Granny: Greek octopus stew


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.

    Barbara Aliprantis digs up a generations-old family recipe for a Greek-style octopus stew in this episode of “Cooking with Granny.” Braised in red wine and cooked with love — in homage to her late husband of 46 years — this fiery red octopus stew gets Barbara and Caroline chatting it up over dismembered octopus parts in the kitchen. Watch below!

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.Caroline Shin is a multimedia journalist based in NYC. Recently, she launched “Cooking With Granny†– a Web series in which grandmas teach how to cook traditional dishes from their cultures while simultaneously sharing their funny, sad and surprising experiences with immigration and multiculturalism in a world that’s very different from today’s. Shin was previously a video editor at New York Magazine and holds an M.A. from Columbia Journalism School.

  • A language lover uses her passion to help immigrants succeed

    A language lover uses her passion to help immigrants succeed


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Elizabeth Schwartz, co-owner of Better Speech Now (Courtesy Elizabeth Schwartz)

    Elizabeth Schwartz, a 64-year-old native New Yorker, has always had a fascination with languages. She majored in French in college, she has traveled to four continents, and she is proficient in Spanish. She also earned a master’s degree in speech language pathology.

    After working with children with disabilities for 20 years, and then after getting laid off from her full-time job supervising recent graduates in speech language pathology, Schwartz started her own business at 61. Through Better Speech Now, she helps immigrants achieve their professional goals in the U.S. by teaching them how to speak with a clearer American English accent.

    “I was thinking about starting accent reduction for quite a while…it was almost the same time as getting laid off,†says Schwartz.

    She explains that she set up the business with her friend, Sonu Sanghoee, in 2011. Together, they connected with the non-profit Queens Economic Development Corporation (QEDC).

    “We won the start up competition in 2012, and they supported us every step of the way,†says Schwartz about the organization.

    She explains it wasn’t an easy process since neither of them had ever started their own business before. They had to decide on a business structure, for one.

    “We made like 12 drafts of the business plan, and we used the $10,000 we won to market ourselves and pay for a business coach,†says Schwartz. “It’s not like being a lawyer or a doctor — not everybody knows they can improve their accent. That’s how our business was born. We’ve been having a lot of fun.â€

    What also helped, she says, is the support of family and the community.

    “My son is in the tech world, so he helped us with our website and Facebook page,†says Schwartz. “My partner’s cousin has an MBA, so he helped us…and we designed fliers and held an open house in the community.â€

    She says what she loves most about her work is that she is very passionate about what she does.

    “I’m helping people with a significant problem,†says Schwartz. “People come here, and their accent is a real stumbling block for them. Day-to-day tasks can be very challenging — like talking on the phone.â€

    Schwartz says she also enjoys helping people with interviewing skills.

    “We, as native [English] speakers don’t realize how difficult it can be to go someplace where our language is not understood,†she says. “I feel I am helping people with that…and it’s very gratifying.â€

    One of her favorite success stories is of an attorney from Hong Kong. She says before taking accent reduction classes, he used to shake from nerves in the courtroom whenever he had to argue before a judge.

    “I really worked with him and built his confidence,†says Schwartz, adding that the average length of the program is an hour per week, for 12 weeks. “The guy from Hong Kong only had six weeks — that was the shortest, but I’ve had people who needed more.â€

    Schwartz usually works out of the Art House Astoria, which is in an area of diverse ethnic backgrounds in Queens, but she also has international clients with whom she works via Skype and e-mail.

    Besides going to the gym almost every morning, Schwartz says her other favorite activity outside work is traveling to Washington, DC, whenever she can, to visit her 2-year-old grandson.

    “He’s the light of my life,” she says. “I adore him.”

    What is one piece of life advice she will advise him one day?

    “Do what you are passionate about. Define what your passion is about, and that should be your life’s work,†says Schwartz. “When you’re my age, you want to look back and feel like you made a difference. In this economy, a lot of young people just grab whatever job they can get, and sometimes you have to do that, but you shouldn’t have to do that for a lifetime. Figure out what you love, and go for it.â€