Transcript :0:00
Ok. Well a lot of times when people ask me this I just say I’m Gary I’m Gary Corbin I was born in Cambridge, Maryland, spent most of my time in Baltimore. I was raised by my mother and grandmother and two younger brothers and a bit of an extended family. When it comes to profession I usually say I’m an actor, first and foremost. I’m also a playwright, and arts administrator and emerging producer and someone who’s stuck on the arts and entertainment industry for life. Made a lifetime commitment.

0:53
Well I think it’s sort of kind of in your DNA so to speak but from a very young age I was really drawn to TV shows I think back in the 60s it was stuff like Leave it to Beaver and Gilligan’s Island and the family used to sit around and watch TV and one of our favorite shows was the Ed Sullivan show and one of the frequent guests were Diana Ross and the Supremes, and just like Opera the Supremes and especially the Motown Sound, sort of uh, I could identify with them and that was where it started. And of course as you grow from childhood on to adolescence and what have you.

1:43
When I was in high school we were kids in the ghetto before it became the hood, young black kids. And they had after school programs because they had funding for it and it was a program called the Model Cities Cultural Arts program. And it was a program that gave young inner city kids something to do after school and of course there was the drama club and I joined the drama club. And they say that there aren’t any or not many African American role models but there was a guy, Robert Russell, an actor I believe he was in his late 20s back then and he took us under his wing and

2:28
And introduced us to the world of theater. And we started doing things like, we didn’t just do the typical stuff like we did The Rainmaker, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we even did British farce [laughs] and there was always a budget for it we would dress up in costume and have the set designs, the whole works I mean it was like a full-fledged production. And then, fortunately and unfortunately at the year of 18 at the I guess my first year in college, I was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma. That was in ’75 and for those of you who may remember it’s a type of bone cancer, and it was introduced to the word by Ted Kennedy’s son, if that’s the right way to put it.

3:30
What I was told back then was that if I didn’t have my leg amputated that I would die, essentially. So they had to do a high above-the-knee amputation for a lot of reasons, I mean the tum–the location of the tumor–it actually was affecting two joints. I believe at the time they were actually considering, since I was still growing you know I was 18 and until you’re 25 you’re still growing, so they decided to keep me from some other surgeries. And the first thing out of people’s mouths were that ‘Well there goes your acting career.’ So I went through the chemotherapy and my mother and grandmother. Grandmother the typical Lena Horne Raisin in the Sun African American matriarch and then my mother she had my three brothers at a very young age and she was a working single black mother African American mother.

4:30
Of course they were very nurturing and very loving but they were also strong, and they wouldn’t let me wallow in self-pity and they ushered me into my new life. And I was taken under the wing of the Department of Vocational Rehab and it’s really interesting that right now I’m a master’s student–and I’ll get to that later–in counseling with a vocational rehabilitation option. But I remember my first vocational rehabilitation counselor, Dorothy Clifford, um, strong domineering so to make a long story short after the chemotherapy and the physical therapy and everything um of course there’s the discussion about what are you going to do with your life now, and I still wanted to be an actor despite the fact that you know a couple of people were not sure about that.

5:24
And thirty-some years later they’re still not sure but I’m still determined anyway. Um, but she, Dorothy Clifford, she had some reservations but she paved the way for me to um go to uh the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where I majored in theater. Actually they called in visual and performing arts, theater. And on campus, well the feedback was that I became the campus star, I had lead roles in the Man Who Came to Dinner–which broke all box office records by the way–and, god I did–the good part about being a theater major is they take your raw talent and mold and shaped it and craft it into a craft, a skill, and I knew what theater was. I was exposed to Bertold Breck, the Caucasian Chalk Circle which I did, Beckett, um and of course Shakespeare, of course, and the many different genres of theater. They taught me at University of Maryland Baltimore County how to be a better artist, which was great, but not necessarily the realities of the business world.

6:55
So naively I thought that I would be able to transfer my campus stardom into New York and Hollywood and the works and boy was I shocked. Um, it’s hostile, it’s an industry that’s extremely hostile towards persons with disabilities. Um, and so during that time after I graduated with my degree in theater, my BF–my BA–in theater, my mother passed away with breast cancer. And the thing about that though is that it was harder for me to go through hers and harder for her as a mother to go through mine, than it was for us to handle our own. That episode and the fact that the shock and disappointment about how horrid it actually–I mean I knew it was hard, trying to get into the industry as an actor, but as a disability, um you’re not supposed to use words like impossible, um highly unlikely, improbable, those are the types of words that you would use and people aren’t so nice about it either. They tell you point blank, ‘You can’t walk right,’ cause I do have, like, for my level of amputation which is above knee hip disarticulation uh that’s high and I use a full prosthesis with the brace and everything so that’s an added thing.

8:41
And back then they weren’t too kind to African Americans as well–uh limited roles–so the disappointment of knowing because I had brought into the concept that this is America, the land of opportunity, if you believe if you work hard you can achieve anything that you want. And I relied on that and I did work hard, I believed, I mean I conquered my cancer I learned to walk on my prosthesis I did my homework, I rehearsed endless hours and knowing that I had picked a difficult field but I had done what I was supposed to. So when I stepped up to the plate to achieve whatever I could, um, well you’re only hearing my side of the story but basically I was told things like, ‘There’s no way you’re gonna make it in the industry as an actor. Period. And coupled with the death of my mother who was my number one fan I went into a serious emotional decline. And it was for many years.

10:04
But I finally got out of it, when I got out of it, we’re talking about like 1982 and I got out of that fog around 1986 and mind you by that time the concept of mental illness was something that was not really well known at the time or appreciated for what it is. So I didn’t know I was bipolar too. There was a bit of…see the thing about my life is that when you go to a tragedy sometimes there is a light at the end of the tunnel. So I walked into the office of the Maryland State Arts Council one day and I was looking for a job, and I was ready to take anything matter of fact I applied as a secretary. And I interviewed and they were so impressed with the interview that they made me the first Director of Performing Arts Programs at the Maryland State Arts Council.

11:16
And um, actually it was one of the best years of my life. Going to college, conquering cancer and going to college was probably the best, then my years at the Arts Council was another one. And it introduced me to the arts as a business, that I didn’t get when I was in school. Not complaining, you have to learn to become a great artist, and if you’re going to go into the business angle you need to know great art when you see it because great art costs money like anything else. So as director…I was introduced primarily to the not-for-profit sector, and that means well it means many things…so I oversaw all of the, many of…I handled the smaller and midsize and what have you theater and dance programs in Maryland and the individual artists. And I formed the panels and I learned not-for-profit arts funding frontwards and backwards, and of course being at Maryland I was next door to the National Endowment for the Arts, and um I got um invited to participate on certain types of panels.

13:03
I left that secure job because I wanted to prove that a person with a disability can be an actor. Left it too early, but I left and but I was armed with the experience I had as an arts administrator, and to make a long story short and I’m jumping because it’s a long story, I decided I would go to New York, and try my best, and audition and get close to Broadway or Off-Broadway, and it was extremely hard. In the industry it’s like barely two percent of the jobs that performers with disabilities–and I don’t have the exact statistics with me–but you get the idea it’s very small. Uh, so I what I decided to do after um joining various groups, black groups, groups of people with disabilities and the whole works to try to address the void and the need and the discrimination and the injustice and the disparity, and I sat in on one meeting, and I sort of had an epiphany. I thought, ‘Well we had this same meeting five years ago…no a decade ago..no two decades ago…no several decades ago! We’re having the same meeting, and I don’t want to marginalize but essentially it amounted to writing protest letters to producers, asking why aren’t certain number of African Americans hired, why are persons without disabilities being put into roles other than people with disabilities

15:02
and what have you and we’re really going to sock it to them and tell them about themselves and make them cast us and give us the opportunities, or at least the fair chance. One person said at least a fair chance to fail. Um, the epiphany was, well you can’t really make other people, uh, tell your story. Or, they don’t have the passion, even if there’s empathy and desire they’re looking at the market potential and they’re looking at their audience and they’re looking at so many things as well as the traditional prejudice so I started looking at some other people, and I’m not begrudging anybody, but they were making hundreds of millions of dollars to produce what some people consider…trash. [laughs]

16:00
And um people that were producing something that’s really going to do something good for um the people that are consuming it are having doors slammed in their faces. So, in addition to, I arrived at the decision that in addition to creating your own opportunity, um, I’m sorry in addition to waiting for others to give you an opportunity perhaps we should also try to create opportunities for ourselves. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. So I was walking down the streets of Harlem one day and this is one of those stories, and I was thinking well how in the world can I create a role for myself, and at that time the one-person shows were becoming very popular. You had Eric Begossian, um doing Talk Radio and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and Whoopie Goldberg did hers, where she did something that’s very universal, you put a white shirt over your head and she pretends she’s a black girl wanting to be a white girl this is my long, luxurious hair, blonde hair [laughs], and Anna DeVere Smith was becoming very popular.

17:18
And during that time I had just finished reading Wallace Terry’s book Bloods. Which was one of the first significant accounts of the African American male experience in Vietnam. Up until then it had been Apocalypse Now and Platoon etc. And he was nominated the Pulitzer Prize and he actually served in Vietnam. So the book was essentially videotaped, person-to-person accounts with African Americans who served in Vietnam from every um part of the armed services…the navy, the army, the marines, and different ranks like sergeant and private and what have you and essentially he just allowed them to talk, and to share their experiences from their gut. And it was one of the most real, gut-wrenching, raw, and visually powerful um words that I read on paper where an image comes into your mind, and it was all about what one of my main drama teachers taught me, to dig deep inside yourself and pull out whatever raw wonders are hiding there.

18:55
And I looked up in the sky and I had this image of four pieces of the pie and I don’t know why that came, maybe somebody gave a lecture or something, with one of the workshops, and then I thought four, well, One-legged Men. And I wrote the first one which was a very graphic, raw monologue about a Vietnam, dedicated to the African American Vietnam soldier, but it wasn’t exclusive to African American, and I’m not apologizing for that, I think some things have to be exclusive to our experience because people write history and try to rewrite history and deny us the opportunity to say these things. But, um, my first piece is universal, all wars all races, and not just people who’ve been in wars but anyone who’s been in that type of crisis. And then I wrote four other pieces and got ’em together and wrote a script and started applying for grants. Because I kept griping to people, to strangers and to people in the industry, and they were like, ‘Well, you gotta do it yourself.’

20:03
So I did it and I got the New York Foundation for the Arts, well first it was the Individual Artists in Playwrighting from the Maryland State Council, and then they um theater commission from the NY state council, the performance art fund, I’m doing it out of sequence, the performance art fund from the Franklin Foundation from Jerome, and the…where they pick one for each of the boroughs and I was on Staten Island so I was picked for Staten Island, so just to get the encouragement. Because when you’re told, well I could say some harsh words about what people are thinking but essentially when you’re a person with a disability people magnify it more than what it is, and they only see that.

21:11
So I started searching for a director and I found William Martin who was an assistant with Edward Alby and I had an extensive Broadway/Off-Broadway college theater director, the type of director who loved actors…he worked with…all different types of stars and he knew theater. So we took the stories and we shaped and molded them and made them better stories and we put it on the stage and I performed it in New York and Montreal and I performed it and it got rave reviews or whatever, and the process, that process demystified the concept of producing. What happens to a lot of people is you get this image in your mind about what something is like and its so huge till you’re afraid to do it and up till that point I was guilty of it too. But what I found and what I mean by demystifying the concept of producing, uh that concept, or that project, um, eradicated some of my fears and it um destroyed some of the myths.

22:30
You have this image–producer, you know a bunch of white guys sitting up in a high tower on broadway smoking cigars and millions of dollars. Actually, and I don’t want to overly simplify, but it’s about raising the money, which I happen to do with my grants, in a small scale but hey. Raising the money, renting the space to rehearse and create, and hiring the people–your director, your stage manager and whatever and your actors and you put it on. And you work, cause Bill and I worked really hard to make this a really good piece of theater, and it turned out to be that.

23:16
So that’s when I decided, ok, I’m an actor as well and I have produced and that’s when I decided to be a producer as well, so I joined the New Producers of Broadway League, I sent an email to Rachel Riner, Hi Rachel if you’re out there, she’s just wonderful, um. People like Rachel Riner they help you to forget about all of the discouragement and um all of the slammed doors, because it’s hard, but if you hang in there every now and then someone comes along and opens that door and lets you in and she did. And one good part about being part of the New Producers of Broadway League is you get a chance to have a sit down, face-to-face, well actually it’s like any other workshop where people are invited we new producers and a panel discussion meeting and I’m seeing actual Broadway producers sit across the stage….

24:25
The producers of Memphis, the guy that produced Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Lansbury and the revival of A Little Night Music, and um it’s all about learning something. And the main thing I learned back then was ok I’m a shoestring producer now, but I’m dealing with the same issues essentially that they’re dealing with, because they’re discussing their target market, audience development, how do you market the product, how do you get people to want to come, how do you advertise it, and just about everything. The big difference though is that I’m working paycheck by paycheck and they’re talking about millions of dollars. But the concept is there. That experience encouraged me to continue pursuing my pursuit as a business person.

25:25
So I joined the small business administration and um, different types of small business development organizations that exist to help people develop more, and the main reason I’m doing it, now I’m doing it to create opportunities for myself no one else will, but the idea is to try to help others. So I formed Globescope Arts and Entertainment Inc. which is home to disabled and senior citizen artists and entertainers, underrepressented cultures and our supporters. Now we’re refining the mission statement, but with that I was able to produce multi arts events with singers and dancers and what have you, and from some of my small business development mentors, uh, from Baruch College the small business entrepreneurs program…

26:51
Now what happened was I got a scholarship from Reese Baron for acting and film and TV and what have you and people in Hollywood, people in Hollywood have been trying to get me to come here for 10 years but I could not abandon my grandmother who had suffered a stroke and it was a six-year nightmare. And it’s a good thing that this is a health oriented project as well because another part of Globescope is we’ve got to do something about the senior citizens. It’s pathetic the way we treat them in this country. So anyway but while I’m here I’m gonna work on the solo career and continue to work on Globescope, and something else wonderful happened–um as I discussed earlier when I mentioned that all of the rejections and people doing everything unintentionally and intentionally to prevent you from moving forward with your dream, every time that happens someone else comes along.

27:56
So I decided that I wanted to, since I ran out of money, and I’m in the start-up phase and am having problems getting money and finishing up my business plan or whatever, I decided to get my master’s. And um, uh, I started browsing around the halls of Cal State LA and my third-party funder would not fund TV, film and theater, but I thought I’m going to have to find some kind a way to get some money to pay for my dream and there was a guy, I called up the counseling with vocational rehabilitation and Cal State Los Angeles and Dr. Martin Brodwin got on the phone, and it was something about the repoir it was natural nothing forced about it and I was like ok I have a counseling and they want me to, we’re thinking about finding money for me to go to grad school…

28:58
and me finding a career to look into and um, he said well can you come down next Wednesday I came down that Wednesday and we sat there and the deadline for to get into the grad program was Friday and he’s well this is may be a little bit impossible but do you think you might be able to get your statement and your three references and fill out the application by 3:00 Monday. Well we spoke and it was a really nice conversation and the minute I got out of the meeting I called a couple of people in New York and I called my counselor and she said ‘Oh I’ll write a letter,’ and my father figure in New York, I’ll write a letter, and one of my biggest funders, so I had my letters to email to me. And then I barricaded myself in for the weekend and wrote my statement and filled out my application and 12, maybe 2:00 everything was on his desk.

30:01
And so I went for the interview and I was accepted into the program. The master’s program at Cal State Los Angeles–counseling with a vocational rehabilitation option–and I love that. In my undergrad it was visual and performing arts with a concentration in theater. You need to broaden it. But anyway so I’m here. Woo! The first year…that summer! It was…we’ll put it this way, uh this is April, July I’ll be 57. And in a couple years I’ll be a 40 year cancer survivor. You don’t remember things or process information in the same way you did at 57 even if you’re youthful 57, I mean I’m trying to turn the clock back, but you don’t process information the same way you did when you were in your 20s, but he took me by the hand. Dr. Brodwin, Dr. Paul. Um everyone here, the staff is wonderful, and Dr. oh because I had to take statistics.

31:12
And I can’t count. I could barely count…I’ve never done well in math. And, um, sure enough the first day at school, ‘Well um tighten your seat belts based on these test scores I want you to find the cumulative frequency the relative frequency and what have you,’ and I thought ‘Ok, I might have made a mistake, maybe I shouldn’t take this class.’ I was in Dr. O’s office with a drop slip, and she looked at it calmly, ‘Hm, well I’ll sign it, I’ll get the professor to sign it, but I think you can do it.’ [laughs] And then I think she said, ‘Well I have some suggestions’ and then she said, ‘Well just sit in for the summer for the first 10 weeks, digest it, get it all in your system, listen, look at it, take it in and then come back in the fall and then we’ll start the grading process.’

32:13
I’ll give you an incomplete and we’ll start the grading process. Well my first reaction was that’s 20 weeks I can’t take 20 minutes of this class. [laughs] And she’s like well you’re gonna have to do it if you wanna…so anyway, but I got a tutor and um, she just oh kind, all it takes is a kind person. My point being that after decades and decades in the arts and entertainment business, wouldn’t it have been nice to have someone just usher me in the way Dr. Brodwin and Dr. O did? It took one weekend, to get someone to look at you and see you for who you are, see what your potential is, not tell you who you are not but tell you who you are, something you’ve been waiting forever to…so that’s what’s happening.

33:09
And you know when people, when you say you wanna do something and tried to do something many people have a tendency to go to far on the pessimistic side or too far on the optimistic and paint too rosy a picture. The reality is actually in the center. So I’m riding the center. Now, how does vocational rehabilitation gel with arts and entertainment? I’ll tell you. My work has always had a social enterprise element to it–be it not-for-profit or not, and I’m going by the premise right now, or the hard-core belief, when you look at where people are, and I’ve been learning this in my voc rehab classes, when you look at the state of the lives of people with disabilities right now the employment statistics are grim. Um, a lot of senior citizens who thought they would retire are not gonna be able to retire and pulled back into work. We live in a marginalized me me society where racism still exists, prejudice still exists and even worse, indifference and denial have even taken their place. They’ve usurped the reality of that.

34:39
So, the, I guess, and you know we’re human and there’s always going to be something about being uncomfortable about around someone who is different from who you are. I mean I get the discomfort and it took me years of therapy for me to reach a level of acceptance that people are discomfortable, are not comfortable, with the fact that I had an amputation, the fact that I walk with a prosthesis, etc. I understand that. Uh, but what has to happen is that attitudes really need to change. I mean this is the 21st century, the year 2013 and we’re still holding on to these things. Well, how do we do it?

35:38
Well, I have a talent and others…I’ve decided to combine my artistic talents with my administrative talents and come up with a concept that’s going to bring us out of the shadows and into the light and the best way to do that is through film, TV and the stage. That’s how we…now sometimes it doesn’t work…but since I actually live it and others actually live it, uh, I think I have a better idea, or not better but I think I have a good idea of what it means to be a well-rounded individual with a disability. We have hearts we have brains we have spirits and bodies and souls. So once someone has enough, has a lot of exposure to the full humanity of people as a human being, then the stereotypes and the misconceptions and the prejudices they sort of evaporate.

36:47
I mean just look at the um, gay community. In television for example, and I’m not saying that it happened overnight, but a little over a decade or so ago, if you even suggested or mentioned…the ad sponsors would yank it, would yank the program. And now we see images everywhere. But with people with disabilities um even there are roles with people in a wheelchair and the actors aren’t even in a wheelchair. We do have um, Robert Hall on um, don’t kill me buddy but he’s on CSI and he’s been on there for years, a lot of people don’t even know he’s there he’s a double amputee. Jerry Jewell was the first semi-regular role on The Facts of Life, we got Oscar winners Marley Matlin, Linda Hunt, so it happens but we need to keep the momentum going.

38:00
So I have been–of course I’ve done the workshops and I’m learning it–it’s not just a pipe dream it actually can happen. I had the opportunity to observe people who have tried in the past to do the same thing that I’m trying to do now, I had a chance to watch their success and I had an opportunity to observe um what they did, you know that sunk the ship. And I don’t want to make those kinds of mistakes. So here I am and let’s move onward and forward. And let’s try to bring people with disabilities out of the shadows and into the light. Let’s um appreciate the value of our seniors who are walking history books…

39:37
When I lost my mother, that really triggered it. Um, it was as if, well when that happens and it’s something that has to happen to you, you have to lose your mother too to understand exactly what that means, life becomes a lot less secure. Because when as a child you injure your knee or something, or you break a tooth, who’s the first person that you, ‘Mom!’ and just to see her laying in that casket, stiff and cold–and I wrote a play about that by the way and I use that experience in the play mind you–but to see her cold and stiff and then you kiss her and it’s like kissing the cement, um, it did something to me that’s you know really hard to describe. It broke my brothers, one of them is still broken, the baby brother, he was 18 and he just graduated from college. It just didn’t seem fair, didn’t we just go through seven years prior, my amputation and that was quite a shock and a challenge, so I um went into a deep depression for several years

41:08
And it was exacerbated by um, marijuana and alcohol, that even brought it out more, and then I fell in love with someone and I tried with the individual to take my mother’s place well part of it was taking my mother’s place and that broke me too. And then while that was going on I had just graduated from college from UNBC, the same school as Cathleen Turner, and I see Cathleen Turner on the screen and she’s the big star–Body Heat–and I’m being, when I walk into a casting office despite the fact that the quality of my artwork has never been challenged, never. Some people think that I am brilliant–their words–some people think that I am, but I would go into the casting office and they look at me as if I’m some type of joke, ‘What are you doing here,’ and I would do a wonderful audition and then after the audition they would say ‘Well that was great. Have you ever tried writing?’ [laughs]

42:15
You know those types of things. And then when I would go out, cause you know I like making love and relationships and those types of things, and I got a lot of rejections. It’s very painful to get rejected because you’re an amputee. Um, especially with someone that you’re attracted to and you know you’re young, so that was part of it and then, I went through the process and went to therapy, and then I got the Arts Council job, and I left that too early to tour with a group and then I thought I had made a big mistake cause I got fired from that job…she was an evil bitch. Pardon the expression…she was evil…a polio survivor. You see sometimes your own people, oh they can cut you up worse than others. So as a matter of fact any break that I’ve gotten in life has come from white males.

43:21
You know the races, white male. All the big significant breaks have come from a white guy who saw me as Gary. Well not all of ’em but most of ’em. And then there were some good years. And then my grandmother had a stroke, and mind you my grandmother wasn’t just my grandmother she was my best friend. And then she had a stroke. And she became mom after 25 years, and when she had that massive stroke in ’96 it took away her ability to speak to and just to see this proud…she’s Lena younger…and to see that happen to her…and my uncle had died of a heart attack before then and so she lost my mother and uncle and my aunt was the one left. And, well it got really the relationship between my aunt and my cousins got extremely hospital. To be fair for their first two years they took care of her.

44:44
But then afterwards she was in the nursing home for the next few years and that felt like a slow death sentence where you’re gonna lose a mother twice. And towards the end one of the nurses at the nursing homes said, ‘You’ve been here for her, she’s getting ready to die. Go to New York. She doesn’t really know you’re here. Go to New York.’ And so I went to New York, fell in love with someone, got my heart broken, had a nervous breakdown. My first job, with Cushman and Wakefield, and it was a good one, but I was slowly losing it before then cause I had walked off of five jobs. And just that night it was like I had gone through a dark tunnel, and I just broke down. So I went to the hospital, they admitted me, and um I was there for five weeks.

45:53
There was this main doctor who for two weeks would not let me make the call–cause what I was doing was I was calling my grandmother in the nursing home cause I knew she was, well she may have been too far gone but if she was she would’ve been waiting for me cause I was the only one she could depend on–and so I was calling them when I was allowed to call, to let them know, to tell them that the reason I hadn’t been seeing her is that I got this really bad cold and I didn’t want to infect her. And they said that they’d been giving her the messages. But when I finally made that call they were like, ‘Well didn’t you hear? She passed away two weeks ago?’ So that’s how I learned. I missed the funeral and everything. But that was ok though cause it was so nasty between me and the rest of the family. I was demonized. I was the devil. Because I knew what she really wanted. Part of it. And so,

46:57
They through me out on the street in the hospital, lied to me and next thing I knew I was out in the street, homeless, and the first shelter was like a jail. They got me out of there and then I stayed in one for about six months and then they found me housing. And then I slowly but surely…now before the breakdown I was working with Four One Legged Men with Bill, but we had to stop it because of what was going on. And then I got my housing and after I got my housing and started making my climb back I went on SSD cause I wanted to get my mind back together so it was the mental thing. And, um, during that time though I was still winning fellowships and awards and grants. And then I was finally able to do the show. So those were the dark periods.

48:34
So Four One-Legged Men is a one-person show, I perform it I wrote it and I perform in it. And it’s essentially about four different high above the knee amputees from different backgrounds and seasons and eras. It starts in the winter of the present time where I play a writer who’s visiting a nursing home. He’s guilty about not seeing his grand, well foster grandparent cause he was adopted, and um he decides to go and to dedicate three stories that he wrote. So we move from the fall in the nursing home to the present day in 1957 in the spring, um where a father wants visitation rights to his toddler-aged daughter and he has a huge battle with his wife and he storms out of the house and he gets drunk and falls asleep and he dreams of uniting with his daughter, and um his mother in law which he was really in love with over his wife, they see a rainbow….

49:53
And um, he comes to terms with his amputation and his divorce and the whole works and his love for his daughter. And after that scene it moves into the AIDS era in the 80s where I play a gay male, and it’s the 4th of July and I’m dressed up in a white nurse’s uniform with a white cap and a black stripe. He’s going to a costume party in a bathhouse. And he falls and breaks his artificial leg at a remote bus stop, and mind you back then they didn’t have cell phones, and he’s trying to and he’s got one quarter to do a public…to hop down the hill cause when your leg is broken you gotta hop…down the hill to call either his father who hates his lifestyle or his friend who he just had a huge argument with.

50:47
And while he’s um deciding he reminisces about how he equates his life to Dorothy and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind…he’s gonna find his way home. And after that scene the third one it moves into the third scene waiting for Oz, the Vietnam part where I play a Vietnam veteran with an afro–you take licenses when it’s theater–he’s detained on the psych ward of a hospital, and I have on nothing but my army shorts. I take off the prosthesis and I perform the piece in it’s entirety with my, on my one leg. And he goes through the ordeal of this deranged delusional Vietnam vet who’s in a state of delirium, but not enough that he doesn’t realize that he wants to be united with Oz, who’s the symbol of the powerful African American veteran in the Vietnam War. And it sounds tragic, it’s raw and gritty–I have the raw version and the clean version.

51:59
And at the end of the dance his liberation is he dances to Ike and Tina Turner’s Proud Mary and I dance on one leg to Ike and Tina Turner’s Proud Mary. Not doing it now but I want to revive it, before I get 60 and I can’t do it anymore, kick the legs up and jump up and whatever. And hop on chairs and stand on chairs and raise my fists. Can’t do it! There will be a time in the next few years where I won’t be able to do it. So that’s um Four One-Legged Men.

52:59
Yeah, um. I guess well the thing is I um, I had just well it was the year that I had graduated from college and I was optimistic. Because after all I was the campus star. So I mean I and The Man Who Came to Dinner it broke all box office records at the college, and um it was well established that I could act despite my disability, that I could pack a house, that I could get laughs that I could play all different types of roles, so I just went charging out there thinking, ‘Yeah it’s a difficult world,’ and by that time Howard Heerollins from Baltimore had done Ragtime and he was nominated for an Oscar. So I just thought that there was hope. But to continuously hear, you know without even giving somebody a chance, ‘Yeah, you’re good. But it’s not good enough,’ and so I’m sort of paraphrasing, that brings you down.

54:11
And um, just like I said my mother was, when you have your mother, you know you feel safe. I guess you know I mean from our very early stages in infancy we connect and attach to the mother and then when we come out of the womb there’s the stages–Erickson’s seven stages of development and I can’t remember any of them right now–but we go through the stages. And my mother was barely in her 40s and she died. And um, I guess during that time before that time and before my mother’s death and before I had to face the reality that becoming successful in the industry was going to be a lot harder than I thought it would, I had this, an extremely positive attitude, a Peter Pan type of attitude, I actually believed that if you waved a magical wand and sprinkled stardust you could create miracles, and I still believe that now. [KICKER?]

55:25
But um, I’ve had a little bit of a reality check. [laughs] So now it’s a thing where if my dreams don’t come true the way I want, of course I’m still proud of what I have accomplished but I still want more, I want to do film, I want to do TV I want to do more, but, um, with years of therapy I’ve been able to accept that if I want a romantic relationship that there are people that I’m gonna be attracted to that aren’t going to be attracted to me because I have a disability…it doesn’t hurt anymore. Therapy has helped me reach a level of acceptance…not surrender you still fight but it reaches you, a level of acceptance, it is what it is, and it teaches you how to look on both sides of it. Not the glass half empty half full analogy, that don’t dwell exclusively on the wrong things or what hasn’t happened, but also balance it with what has.

56:35
So I’ve reached a level of acceptance that it’s possible my dreams may not come true but didn’t I try? I lived in New York and um, in living in New York I gave it a try and I’m here in Hollywood and now I’m giving it a try. So when I look back on my life there won’t be any ifs or what-ifs, and I’m at least trying to do something that’s gonna help the next generation. And that’s another thing. Of course at 57 you reach Erickson’s is it stagnation versus…oh! Professor Meliki is gonna kill me. Is it stagnation versus generativity or is it generativity versus stagnation, I can’t remember [laughs] but anyway it’s that stage where you want to give back and help other people.

57:27
And I don’t want other persons with disabilities feeling or being told that you must accept less than your full worth as a human being. So I guess to answer that question during that time I was hurt, I was shocked, I was disappointed and I felt hopeless. I just refused to believe that I had to accept less than my fullest potential. And then the one with my grandmother too, that was another knockdown. My two favorite heroes are Mohammed Ali and Diana Ross.

58:10
And just to give the boxing analogy it felt like that there was that final blow, and I was knocked out or knocked down and the referee was going 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and during that time I wasn’t gonna get up off the mat. I wasn’t. So I could feel people lifting me up, and you know so I’m up off the mat and I’m fighting. [laughs]

58:48
Oh, [laughs]. It’s heaven on earth. It’s work. A lot of people think it’s easy, it’s work. But I feel 100 percent complete when I’m doing it. One-hundred percent com-plete. It’s just as good as making love if not better. [laughs] Better. [laughs] Or it’s traveling to some exotic place but you feel, um, you feel 100 percent complete and this is why I’m alive and this is life and this is the closest thing to heaven on earth. It’s, that’s the only way I can really describe it, yeah.

more info:Corbin chose surgery and promised himself he would continue acting. After recovering from the procedure, Corbin went straight into physical therapy. He spent months getting used to the feel of the heavy prosthesis wedged just under his upper thigh. Then he started college. Everything seemed to fall into place—he began acting again, and rose to campus stardom. Corbin even earned his school, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, honors when his acting group broke box office records for their production of The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which he played the lead.

The fame was short-lived. When he graduated, Corbin found no acting company took him seriously. After being turned down from hundreds of roles in New York City, Corbin traveled across the country to try out in Hollywood. By that time, he had run out of money. Corbin soon found himself homeless. A guidance counselor suggested he try to get a scholarship for a graduate program. She thought it would help him get a higher-paying job. He thought it would at least help him fund his dream—an acting company for people with disabilities.