#joe papp

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Joe Papp, producer of the city's first Shakespeare festival, with consulting engineer Ben Rabiner under the portable stage in Central Park, June 20, 1957. Papp's theater project brought 50 free Shakespeare performances to New Yorkers, and not just in Central Park but in every corner of the metropolis. The portable stage was patterned after Elizabethan design and packed into a trailer truck. Papp launched the project when—to everyone's amazement—30,000 people turned out for 10 Shakespeare performances at a waterfront amphitheater in the summer.

Photo: Associated Press

[madeline-kahns]

Madeline Kahn and Joe Papp at the opening night party for Marco Polo Sings a Solo, 1977.

[shakespearenews]

Joe Papp and the Transformation of American Theater

With a simple yet radical idea that Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, was not the property of the educated, or the middle class, or the upper class, but everybody, Papp took Shakespeare to the people of New York, free of charge.

“After the Actors’ Lab, I was always trying to start a theater,” said Papp. “I was consumed by the idea.” During his time at CBS, according to biographer Helen Epstein, he read and reread Shakespeare, slipping in and out of Shakespeare like others do Yiddish or Spanish, comparing coworkers to Shakespearean characters, “and salting his speech with Shakespearean lines the way observant Jews quoted the Bible.”

[instrumental-break]

sometimes ur mind just goes ‘dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba joe joe joe joe joe joe joe joe joe you da man’ and you gotta go with it

[itsdlevy]

I remember going to the Tony Awards for Plenty. I’d never seen the American theater, and when all these people walked out, I turned to Joe and said, “I didn’t realize this is what you were protecting me from.” And he said, “Yes, it’s hell out there. Don’t you realize it’s hell out there?”

David Hare, quoted in Free for All

[gregorygalloway]

Joseph Papp (22 June 1921 – 31 October 1991)

[public-digiturgy]

When Shakespeare In The Park Fought Robert Moses, And Won

Before Trump-as-Caesar, another right-wing assault on Shakespeare in the Park almost killed the festival before it could become the institution that it is today.

Illyria

The Public has a long history of standoffs with government officials, stretching all the way back to basically the beginning: when Joe Papp took on Robert Moses over keeping Shakespeare in the Park free - and won. This Gothamist piece is a great primer for the story behind the story.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A youthful Joseph Papp at the box office of the Broadway play Comes a Day, for which he was production stage manager. The picture was taken on November 12, 1958, the day he learned that an arbitrator had ruled in his favor in his complaint against CBS. The network had fired him after he refused to answer questions of a congressional committee probing "un-American activities," i.e., Communism. The arbitrator ordered CBS to re-hire him and pay him $1,500 in back wages (around $16,000 in today's dollars).

Photo: John Lindsay for the AP