Joseph Papp: One singular sensation
Theater great's lifelong mission benefitted all
Broadway has long been the heart and soul of New York’s commercial theater, but from the late 1950s on, any hardcore New Yorker in love with the stage — and the notion that theater was not just for those who could afford to buy a ticket — knew that the destination of choice, if only in summer, was the New York Shakespeare Festival (more familiarly referred to as Shakespeare in the Park). That’s where you went to see the classics under the stars in Central Park, even though landing a pair of free tickets often involved sitting in line all day in the blazing sun or enduring a drenching downpour. And then, beginning in 1967, if you were in any way drawn to all that was new and exciting for the stage, you headed straight to The Public, the former library Papp turned into a theater multiplex at 425 Lafayette Street, in the heart of Greenwich Village. It was simply THE place to be.
The Public was where the musicals “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” were born, along with such plays as “That Championship Season,” “Streamers,” “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” and “The Normal Heart.” It also was the place where Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Raul Julia, Estelle Parsons, Mandy Patinkin, James Earl Jones, Tommy Lee Jones, Christopher Walken and countless others came to work. And there was one dazzlingly driven and complicated man behind it all. His name was Joseph Papp.
Born in Brooklyn in 1921, Joe Papp, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, possessed something far more intriguing than the usual theatrical producer’s high risk genes. He had a mission, and that mission grew exponentially from the late 1940s, when he first became involved in theater by way of the Navy, until his death in 1991. Papp was a cultural populist in the very best sense of that term. He believed the theater should be accessible to everyone. And he believed that if it was to survive it had to support the new as well as champion the established.
(Dan McCoy)
Now, reborn thanks to an accord with Papp’s widow, Gail Merrifield Papp, it is finally seeing the light. And in part because a good number of the interviewees, including Papp, are no longer around — and in part because the current economic upheaval brings us back to Papp’s Depression era roots and his initial passion for language that translated into a love of theater — the book, which primarily follows the growth of the theater by chronicling the development of landmark productions, seems more valuable than ever.
Papp did far more than produce plays, nurture playwrights, expand audiences and stumble upon a way to connect the non-profit world of theater with the for-profit arena. Often he literally fought City Hall in his effort to make theater “free for all.” His epic battle with Robert Moses, the powerful parks commissioner of New York who tried to derail the Shakespeare Festival, is one of the most dramatic chapters in Turan’s book. And because it is told through so many different voices, it is never reduced to a simple good vs. evil debate. Of course this was only one of many “wars” Papp would fight during his career.
As Streep observed: “In 1975, when I graduated from drama school, Joseph Papp was undisputed lord of the theatrical realm in NYC ... Lincoln Center was his, and he was on Broadway AND in the park AND on traveling stages AND downtown and all around the town. Joe Papp’s Public Theater. The tough, magic name that buzzed the halls of the drama school and drew us like a magnet into Manhattan. When I got an audition there I was wild, and when I got a JOB there I was beside myself.”
“Tough magic” is the perfect description of Joe Papp who, recalling his zeal to establish the Public Theater said: “I move first and pull the money in afterward. I mean, if I’d waited until I had everything, nothing would happen. That’s a risky way to live, but that’s the way I work.”