Playbill: he founder of Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts—the industry’s tool for preservation of generations of live theatre—isn’t a former actor or director. She’s not a pedagogically trained theatre historian or the great-grandaughter of some theatrical icon. In the 1960s, Betty Corwin— then a mother of three living in Connecticut—was working as a volunteer at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx when she decided to apply for a training program within the psychiatric department to become a social worker. To apply, Corwin had to write an autobiography. In rediscovering her personal history, she found her future.
3 comments:
I never really realized before reading this article, how there used to be a time when theatrical performances weren't recorded. The works before Corwin's time have all disappeared and all that is left of them is the reviews, if any, that were published in a newspaper. This is simply astonishing to me, because my whole lifetime, cameras have been readily available to record just about every show. TOFT is such an important research database because, without those recordings, performances could have simply disappeared, and now they are recorded beyond the script in an educational way that benefits so many people. I could not be happier to hear that such a dedicated women took her time to invest herself in this project, and give it all she had to create an archive that could very well last forever.
Keeping records of past theatrical performances is vital to those of us that aim to recreate and grow these roles and shows from what they originally were. The idea that there was time and place where recording and keeping track of these shows is both intriguing and hard to believe into days age when we can create databases of props from every performance we've done and know exactly what it was used for. Seeing how everyone has created and uses their own resources for recording and retaining the information from past performances in their films. I love the work that Corwin has done for all of the different performances that we have and ideas that different designers and directors have for a different run of a show. This is something that sometimes we are trying to ignore and avoid when we are creating our own renditions but appreciate and enjoy in order to learn about the craft.
This was such a cool process and story to read about-- Betty Corwin, not formerly a director or theatre practitioner, must have put in so many years of work to help document the legacy of theatre and found the database that will help these works continue to live on. It is inspiring that this woman is so determined in contributing to the world of theatre, as she cites that being involved in theatre was one of the most exciting times of her life. It's incredible that she pursued a goal she initially had no idea how to work out, and was given very little time and resources to complete her task. Yet determinedly she set out to do what she'd previously only dreamed of, and ended up having a huge impact on theatre as she had hoped. I'm moved by her hardheadedness and unfailing persistency that ultimately resulted in being able to document works of theatre that would otherwise become lost from generation to generation.
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