Joseph Papp

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Joseph Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky; June 22, 1921 – October 31, 1991) was an American theatrical producer and director.

He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in lower Manhattan.

There, Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals.

Among numerous examples of these were the works of David Rabe, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody (the first off-Broadway play to win the Pulitzer Prize), and Papp's production of Michael Bennett's Pulitzer Prize–winning musical, A Chorus Line.

Papp also founded Shakespeare in the Park, helped to develop other off-Broadway theatres and worked to preserve the historic Broadway Theatre District.

Early life

Papp was born as Joseph Papirofsky in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the son of Yetta (née Miritch), a seamstress, and Samuel Papirofsky, a trunkmaker. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. (The 2010 documentary film Joe Papp in Five Acts says his mother was a Lithuanian Jew, and his father a Polish Jew.) He was a high school student of Harlem Renaissance playwright Eulalie Spence. Papp was also the uncle of choreographer turned music video director Diane Martel.

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Career

In 1954, Papp founded Shakespeare in the Park, with the intention of making Shakespeare's works more available to the public. In 1957, Shakespeare's plays were staged in Central Park for free performances. Since his death at the open-air Delacorte Theatre every summer in Central Park, these Shakespeare in the Park performances continue.

Papp spent a considerable portion of his career in New York City promoting his idea of free Shakespeare. Papp's 1956 film Taming of the Shrew, outdoors in the East River Amphitheatre on New York's Lower East Side, was pivotal for the Papp, mainly because critic Brooks Atkinson endorsed Papp's vision in The New York Times. Kate, the leading role, of the theatre, spoke about the benefits of this exposure (in an autobiography published posthumously as a result of Tom Viola's co-production).

Papp had a permanent base for his free summer Shakespeare performances in Central Park's Delacorte Theater, an open-air amphitheatre, by age 41, he was looking for an all-year theater to build his own. He fell in love with the location and the Astor Library's character after visiting other locations. Papp rented it in 1967, according to the City's website, it was sold for one dollar a year. It was the first building saved from demolition under the New York City landmarks preservation law. Papp moved his workers to the newly opened Public Theater in the hopes of attracting a younger, less traditional audience for new and experimental playwrights.

Papp's interest at the Public Theater shifted away from Shakespeare's classics to modern ones. Charles Gordone's No Place to Be Somebody (the first off-Broadway show, and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize) and the plays of David Rabe, Tom Babe, and Jason Miller were among the notable Public Theater productions. Papp characterized Rabe's productions as "the most important thing I did at the Public." Larry Kramer's 1985 production The Normal Heart challenged the prejudicial political system, which was turning its attention away from the AIDS epidemic and the gay community. "The whole direction of the theater changed with the new playwrights," designer Ming Cho Lee said. [But] none of us knew for a while. ... The Public Theater has gotten more popular than the Delacorte. The new playwrights were more enjoyable to Joe than Shakespeare.

Among Papp's numerous stage and musicals, he is perhaps best known for four productions: Hair, The Pirates of Penzance, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf and A Chorus Line. The last of these started with a series of taped interviews of dancers' reminiscences that were overseen by director/choreographer Michael Bennett. Papp had not earned the right to produce Hair and did not profit from the company's move to Broadway, and he did not profit from the transaction. But he retained the rights to A Chorus Line, and the show's income became a continuing financial support for Papp's work. In comparison to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it received 12 Tony Award nominations and won nine of them, including Best Musical. It was a hit show in Broadway history up to that time, with 6,137 performances. Papp, Bennett, and A Chorus Line established the show pioneering the design process for developing musicals, changing the way Broadway musicals were created later, and many of the workshop's aesthetics and contract terms were established by Papp, Bennett and A Chorus Lines.

Many new actors and actresses were introduced by Delacorte Theatre performances to outdoor Shakespeare and New York audiences for free. Among the memorable performances (including those from before Papp's Delicate John Peel's King Claudius, Margaret Newhurst's Messiah, and James Patterson's Bewicket in Much Ado About Nothing; George C. Scott's In The Benedick and Beatrice of Prince William Lear (1973) as Edmund in Lear's Hamlet; Margaret Garnet's Child with James Earl Moore; and Peter Cleopatra; Hamlet of Thomas Moore, Julia was also a child in Othello with Frances Conroy as his Desdemona and Richard Dreyfuss as Iago. Martin Sheen played Romeo in 1968, one year before his breakthrough in The Subject was Roses. Helen Epstein's complete list of the productions through 1995 is included in Joe Papp: An American Life.

Shakespeare in the Park was not intended for Shakespeare alone. Gloria Foster was Clytemnon in the Greek tragedy Agamemnon, which was followed by Raul Julia as Macheath in Richard Foreman's production of Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, which later moved to Lincoln Center. Papp was also a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and in 1980, he performed a new version of the opera at the Delacorte to commemorate the centennial of The Pirates of Penzance. The spectacle was a hit, and Papp brought it to Broadway, where it ran for over 800 performances. It received Tony Awards for Best Revival, Best Film (Wilford Leach) and Best Actor (Kevin Kline). Linda Ronstadt was selected for Best Actress in a Musical by being nominated for Best Actress in a Musical.

Papp was a pioneer in non-traditional casting, using a multitude of ethnicities and colors of actors in his latest plays and Shakespeare productions. In at least two specific instances, the father of a gay son, Tony, Papp, aligned himself with gay and lesbian issues. He fought anti-obscence laws that Congress briefly placed on the National Endowment for the Arts during the Reagan Presidency, and he produced The Normal Heart, which protested institutionalized "homophobia" as well as Mayor Koch's reaction to the AIDS crisis.

Papp patronized other theatres in New York City, in particular the construction of several Off Broadway theatres, often contributing to successful Broadway transfers, such as A Chorus Line. These included Theatre for a New Audience, which produced several performances at the Delacourte and the Riverside Shakespeare Company, in which Papp took special responsibility, beginning with the financial underwriting of Riverside's New York Parks Tours of Free Shakespeare in 1983, Romeo and Juliet in 1984, and Romeo and Juliet in 1985. Papp and Helen Hayes dedicated the newly renovated theatre at The Shakespeare Center in 1983.

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