For some students it may be hard to believe, but teachers have lives outside of the classroom. In the case of Dr. Diane Cypkin, that life is on the stage. Cypkin been has been a part of the New York theatre scene all her life.
“My parents were holocaust survivors from Lithuania, and my mother always loved the theatre. And so when we came here, my mother immediately gave me singing lessons, dancing lessons, and acting lessons,” said Cypkin. “During the war, when my parents were in the ghetto, it later became a concentration camp. My father wrote songs, so my parents, both of them, always loved the theatre tremendously. It was the most beautiful part of life.”
Cypkin has performed on Broadway in Ben Bonus’s Light, Lively, and Yiddish and directed The World of Sholom Aleichem, The Theatre of Peretz, and Green Fields. She has portrayed a number of classic lead roles, including Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.
“I started in the Yiddish theatre. They needed a young lady. I was in my early teens, and I did many shows in the Yiddish theatre. I was their ingénue for about 25 years, if not more,” said Cypkin.
Dr. Cypkin is fluent in Yiddish. Her dissertation chronicled the history of 2nd Avenue in New York City.
“2nd Avenue was once the Yiddish Broadway,” said Cypkin. “All along 2nd Avenue there were Yiddish theatres and Yiddish night clubs. And so I wrote the history of 2nd avenue by reading a hundred years of the Jewish Daily Forward which was a Jewish newspaper in Yiddish that came out of New York City from late 1800s and is still coming out today…I lived on the microfilm machine.”
In 2007, the Lincoln Center Library asked Dr. Cypkin to do an exhibition on Yiddish theatre icon, Molly Picon.
“In that concert lecture I told the story of her life in English and I sang the songs she made famous in Yiddish,” said Cypkin. “It was a natural for me because I could sing Yiddish, I know what I am singing, and I know the history of the Yiddish theatre.”
The exhibition was very well received. After it closed, Cypkin was asked to do the show at other locations.
“People really started to call and call, so I said okay,” Cypkin said.
Musical Salute to Molly Picon, Star of the Yiddish Theatre! is a collaborated with Russian pianist Lena Panfilova.
“I started to take piano lessons in Brooklyn, and my piano teacher was Lena Panfilova,” said Cypkin. “I started to get calls from various libraries and I said ‘Lena what do you think?’ and she said ‘I am ready, are you?’ And so we’ve gone to lots of libraries across the tri-state area.”
Cypkin and Panfilova have done 30 shows this year, telling the story of Picon’s life and music.
“I love her music and her lyrics are poetry. When I sing it, I see it,” Cypkin told the North Shore Towers Courier back in Feb. after a successful show there. “It’s Molly’s story, but it’s also our story. You end talking about the lower east side, and the audience members all remember going to the Yiddish theatre. They all remember their old homes and their parents. Molly is the icon around which our lives have turned. It’s the story about everybody who lived in her time.”
“Her story is a story of America, and really, the story of why people come to America,” Cypkin expanded further. “Yes, it is the story of, you might say, the Jewish America, but not really. It is really the story of Americans that come here who hope for a better life.”
Dr. Cypkin will be teaching a class on propaganda at Pace in the spring along with introductory courses on public speaking.
“I love teaching at Pace,” said Cypkin. “I enjoy the students and my colleagues. Regardless of the fact that I live in Brooklyn, I always think of Pace as my days in the country.”
With Dr. Cypkin, it’s always go big or go home. Whether on the stage, in the library, or in the classroom, she is passionate about her work, and heads up to future students: she’ll be expecting you’re A Game, every game.