Impact on American Theater

Joe Papp was perhaps the most influential and well-known theater producer in New York for over thirty years.  Somehow, he managed to juggle it all: Broadway hits, plays that nobody liked that made no money, and free Shakespeare in the Park, a legacy that continues two decades after his death.  His career spanned almost 40 years, and over 400 productions since he first founded the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954. Papp was entirely responsible for dreaming up and executing what is still his most enduring legacy: free Shakespeare outdoor on a warm, noisy New York City summer night.

Papp profoundly affected theater in American and especially New York in so many ways, but they essentially boil down to two distinct categories.  The first, and deservedly so, is his undying love of Shakespeare and passionate desire to bring it to every individual that he could.   A middling stage manager at CBS with very little theatrical experience and no real reputation, Papp up and started the Shakespeare Workshop, which soon became the New York Shakespeare Festival.  He also founded the Mobile Theater, all for one purpose: to bring Shakespeare to the masses.  As Papp reflected on the opening night audience for “Julius Caesar,” he commented that it very much reminded him of the audience for Shakespeare’s productions at the Globe: “plain people—workingmen and shoekeepers—but ‘Gentiles all,’ as Shakespeare used to address them.  Papp worked tirelessly to bring Shakespeare to these gentiles.  He even produced two new American plays in Spanish during his “Thirty Nine City Parks Tour” in 1964, trying to reach a still further audience.  As Papp impressed on his predecessor: “This theater must always serve the community some meaningful way.  No matter who’s running it, this theater has got to stay tied to the life of this city.”

The second category in which Papp influenced American theater during the latter half of the twentieth century was through his support for new playwrights.  In the sixties and seventies, almost every hot contemporary volatile play came out of the Public Theater.  Some of the time’s most prolific writers, including David Rabe, Ntozake Shange, Charles Gordone, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Larry Kramer, Jason Miller, Tom Babe, the list goes on and on, got their work supported, produced, and brought to the stage at the Public.  Musicals like “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” could only have been produced by the Public.  It was an institution of monumental importance, where creativity flourished and political correctness was not considered, where money didn’t matter and where the concentration was always on the play.  Papp and the Public kept the theater world honest while they flourished. 

All of these contributions were made possible by Joseph Papp’s fierce and volatile personality.  As a professional, he was known for being volatile, occasionally or not so occasionally intimidating playwrights and bullying directors.  Vogue’s John Gruen described him: “He exudes a kind of angry energy.  And he is fast-talking, fitfully impatient, and not-so-subtly aware of himself.  The sound of his voice is strictly New York City: tough, cool, contained.”  Papp’s passion made him a phenomenal politician and fundraiser, and this in turn allowed him to become such an influential producer.  Time and time again faced with bankruptcy and debt, Papp found a way, pulling money from every fundraiser he could get his hands on, including the city itself. When he didn’t have a place to form his new repertory theater, Papp ingeniously used the newly formed New York Landmarks Commission to buy the Astor Place Library on the cheap.  When about to go bankrupt, he swung an ingenious deal with the city to lease his theater for a dollar a year.  When faced with a moral choice, he always stuck by his principle, often losing millions in the decision.  His career was, according to Stephen Koch: “an extraordinary testimony to the power of will, of a work believed in unambiguously.” 

Joe Papp was the right man at the right time, but that doesn’t make his career and his life any less astonishing and remarkable.  His contribution to the theater world is immeasurable, and I can only imagine what it would have been like to attend Shakespeare in the Park at its absolute height, with the passionate Joe Papp pulling all the strings. 

Photo 1:http://intimateexcellent.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/papp-delacourt.jpg
Photo 2: http://www.centralpark2000.com/assets/attractions/delth-P0001906.jpg