Isaiah Sheffer

Last week, Symphony Space held a memorial celebration for Isaiah Sheffer, the theater’s co-founder who passed away in November. Family, co-workers and actors whose lives were touched by Sheffer shared stories about the 76-year-old Bronx native, who was best known for masterminding “Selected Shorts,” a nationally syndicated radio program in which famous actors read popular short stories, and “Bloomsday on Broadway,” an annual front-to-back reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

“Isaiah’s spirit of adventure was boundless,” said Katherine Minton, Symphony Space’s director of literary programs, who organized Selected Shorts with Sheffer. She recalled his creativity in organizing literary festivals like a reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby in Battery Park and a Walt Whitman celebration on the 100-year anniversary of the writer’s death. “Isaiah was fun, always fun,” she said, echoing a common description of the creative visionary.

Sheffer was characterized as clever, eccentric and tenacious. When he first booked Symphony Space at Broadway and West 95th Street to stage a marathon Bach concert with conductor Allan Miller, the building was a derelict movie theater. But Sheffer saw potential: He wanted to turn the space into a premier venue for the performing arts.

He and Miller endured a decade of fundraising and litigation to secure ownership of the building, and fought just as long and as hard to preserve it. Steven Alden, a lawyer who represented Symphony Space from its inception, recalled Sheffer rejecting developers that would include a theater in their plans for the building but wanted to move it to the basement or on the second floor. Sheffer insisted on maintaining the original theater on the street’s level.

“His plans for the place were so improbable,” laughed Kay Cattarulla, who met Sheffer after the Bach concert and later became a member of the theater’s board of directors and helped launch Selected Shorts. She quoted him by saying that she was so happy now that the building was “not one more Duane Reade.”

Sheffer was Symphony Space’s artistic director for 32 years. He booked an eclectic, genre-spanning range of theatrical, musical and other performances in the space’s two theaters, from political cabarets to African dance recitals. A performer himself, he was especially known for song parodies and little skits he would do to introduce acts or solicit donations during Selected Shorts intermissions. Videos at the celebration showed Sheffer singing about his mock-adoration for Paul Krugman’s New York Times op-ed column and praising arugula to the tune of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

Many speakers shared anecdotes of Sheffer’s humor, including an impromptu fake shouting match with Morgan Freeman around a passersby in the middle of a street, and a joke he loved to tell people after suffering the stroke that eventually led to his death: “I’ve had a stork, but it hasn’t affected my speech or anything.”

Sam Norich, publisher of the Jewish American newspaper The Forward, and Aaron Lansky, founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, praised Sheffer for his contributions to the Jewish community. He appeared in numerous Yiddish plays and radio programs, and had a strong command of the language. “Isaiah personified the culture I sought to preserve,” said Lansky. “He was an original. Jewish through and through.”

Ethel Sheffer, Isaiah’s wife, remembered her husband as “endlessly patient” and deeply passionate about stories. “He loved when I read short stories aloud to him,” she said.

Susannah Sheffer, the couple’s daughter, recalled her father telling her long bedtime stories about his childhood and creating characters for her enjoyment. “It was important for him to show me what he loved,” she said. The two wrote poems for each other throughout Sheffer’s life, and read to each other often.

Susannah said that words were not enough to describe her father’s passing and the loss to the Symphony Space community. She ended her speech with a quote from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, one of the last she and her father read together: “I make these words for what they can’t replace.”

By Angela Barbuti

Ami Price

Christmas in New York City would not be the same without the Rockettes. The iconic group of girls, who have been kicking their way into our hearts at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular for what seems like forever, are celebrating their 85th anniversary. Ami Price, one of the 80 dancers, has been part of the sisterhood that is the Rockettes for 10 years. “They are my best friends. They were all guests at my wedding, and the people I invite over for Christmas,” she said.

The Rockettes are celebrating their 85th year. How is the show different this year?
We have a costume retrospective, showing costumes throughout the 85 years. We’re always adding new numbers. There’s a new scene with Kayla and her mother that shows a 3D video game, which uses the world’s largest LED screen. They use digital projection on the walls of the theater to make you feel a part of the scenes. You’re part of Santa’s workshop and you’re part of the Living Nativity.

I read that you practice six hours, six days a week in preparation for the show.
Yes, we train for about six weeks. Six hours a day, six days a week. Pretty intense. We’re all athletes and dance on the off season. I’m a personal trainer. But once we begin practice, we are learning the precision and getting our high kicks back to perfection. We get in shape really fast those six weeks. [Laughs]

What do you do to prepare for a show?
We are a big sisterhood, so the dressing room is half of the fun. I’m in there with eight of my best friends, so we have a good time getting ready. We do our own makeup and costumes. Our changes are, at most, two minutes, so we have a talented wardrobe who dresses us. We have a pair of shoes for each costume. For our eight-minute tap number, “Twelve Days of Christmas,” those tap shoes are actually miked. There are microphones on the bottom of each shoe.

Give us a glimpse backstage at Radio City Music Hall.
Backstage is not as large as one would imagine, because the stage is so massive. The amusing part of being backstage is the set pieces. For instance, the bus is so large, and there’s nowhere to put it. So when the bus comes offstage, they fly it into the rails. So when you’re backstage, you look up and see these props, like Santa’s sleigh. My dressing room is on the fourth floor, and I only go there to get ready and at the end of the show. Since all the changes are happening on stage level, there are just soldier costumes everywhere. It’s such a funny atmosphere.

What reaction do you get when you tell people you’re a Rockette?
They love it! [Laughs] They won’t believe it; they’ll ask me to kick.

Tell me about your work with Madison Square Garden’s Garden of Dreams charity.
We visit the Ronald McDonald House and—hopefully I don’t cry when I tell you this—I went to a children’s hospital last year in Westchester and it’s so hard because you’re seeing sick children and it’s Christmas. I went to work recently and a little girl, who I had seen in the hospital, was waiting for me. As soon as I walked in, she said, “I missed you.” This little girl, who had brain cancer, told me, “I don’t have my boo boo anymore.”

For tickets to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, visit www.radiocitychristmas.com.