Coordinates: 40°43′45.1848″N 73°59′30.4548″W / 40.729218°N 73.991793°W / 40.729218; -73.991793

The Public Theater in 2011

The Astor Library in the latter half of the 19th century

The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as The Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers. It is headquartered at 425 Lafayette Street in the former Astor Library in the East Village section of Lower Manhattan. The venue opened in 1967, mounting the world-premiere production of the musical HAIR as its first show. It currently is led by Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham.^[1]

The Public is dedicated to embracing the complexities of contemporary society and nurturing both artists and audiences, as it continues Joseph Papp's legacy of creating a place of inclusion and a forum for ideas.^[2]

In addition to five theater venues – the Shiva, the Martinson, the LuEsther Hall, the Anspacher and the Newman – the site is home to Joe's Pub, a cabaret-style setting used for new work, musical performances, spoken-word artists and soloists.

The Public also operates the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where it presents Shakespeare in the Park, one of New York City's most beloved summer traditions. New York natives and visitors alike have been enjoying free Shakespeare in Central Park since performances began in 1954.^[3] Notable productions in recent years include: The Merchant of Venice in 2010, featuring Al Pacino as Shylock; Twelfth Night in 2009, with Anne Hathaway; the 40th anniversary production of Hair in 2008; and Mother Courage And Her Children, with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

Programs and series[link]

In addition to each season of full-scale theatrical productions, The Public also produces a number of different series, festivals and programs each year.

In 2008, The Public presented its inaugural Public LAB series, an annual series of new plays presented in collaboration with LAByrinth Theater Company. Public LAB lets New Yorkers see more of the work they love from The Public in scaled-down productions, and allows The Public to support more artists, as well as gives audiences immediate access to new plays in development at affordable prices. With each Public LAB show, corresponding speaker series are presented as after-show talkbacks to discuss prominent themes, ideas and topics in the plays. A number of plays that have appeared in the Public LAB series have gone onto full-scale productions, including Tracey Scott Wilson’s The Good Negro, which ran at The Public in 2009, and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson , which had a sold-out, thrice-extended Off-Broadway run at The Public in the spring of 2010 and transferred to Broadway that fall.^[4]

Public LAB was expanded in 2011 to include Public LAB SHAKESPEARE, a vital new platform for The Public's ongoing exploration of the Shakespeare canon that continues the growth of The Public's Shakespeare Initiative and expand the many ways The Public produces American interpretations of Shakespeare. The premiere production of Public LAB SHAKESPEARE was Timon of Athens in March 2011, featuring Richard Thomas in the title role.^[5]

The Public Forum, begun in 2010, is an exciting series of lectures, debates and conversations that showcase leading voices in the arts, politics and the media. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, a senior writer at Newsweek, Public Forum events explore issues raised by plays in The Public's season, as well as the political and cultural headlines of today's world. In keeping with the best traditions of The Public, the Forum hosts a wide diversity of views and brings the theater into contact with the society around it. Notable participants in the series include Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, Ariana Huffington, Alec Baldwin and Anne Hathaway.^[6]

The Public hosts the annual Under the Radar Festival, directed by Mark Russell. Begun in 2004, Under The Radar spotlights international artists ranging from emerging talents to masters in the field. The festival is a wild mix of works by ensembles, solo artists, writers, and creators. The ultimate goal of UTR is to offer a crash course in theater that is exciting, independent, and experimental, created by some of the most dynamic artists working today. As of April 2011, there have been 104 productions from over 18 countries,^{[citation needed]} including the United States, Australia, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, France, Ireland, Mali, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Some artists who have collaborated with UTR include SITI Company, Elevator Repair Service, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Superamas, Abbey Theatre, Mike Daisey, Reggie Watts, Teatro De Los Andes, and many more.^[7]

The Public serves as the home of the Emerging Writers Group, which seeks to target playwrights at the earliest stages in their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights. Through the Emerging Writers Group, The Public continues its rich legacy of supporting current and future generations of our country’s most important writers via The Public Writers Initiative – a long-term initiative that provides key support and resources for writers at every stage of their careers. The Public Writers Initiative creates a fertile community and fosters a web of supportive artistic relationships across generations. The Emerging Writers Group is a component of The Public Writers Initiative.^[8]

The Public also fosters New Work Now!, a play reading series that has become a nationally recognized showcase for emerging writers and established artists. New Work Now! allows audiences an opportunity to experience new work by a diverse selection of established and emerging theater artists—all for free.^[9]

The Public Theater invests in theater education, training classical actors through the annual summer acting intensive known as the Shakespeare Lab. The Shakespeare Lab is The Public Theater’s professional actor development program that immerses a carefully-selected company of professional, mid-career actors in a summer intensive exploring the rigors, challenges, and joys of performing Shakespeare.^[10]

The Public also educates through its Shakespeare Spring Break, Summer ShakeUP, and A Midsummer Day’s Camp programs, all for teenagers interested in learning about and performing Shakespeare.^[11]

Suzan-Lori Parks, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Master Writer Chair of The Public, debuted her performance piece Watch Me Work as part of the 2011 Under The Radar Festival. As of April 2011, Parks continues to perform the piece in the main lobby of The Public Theater. A meditation on the artistic process and an actual work session, Watch Me Work features Parks working on her newest writing project in the main lobby of The Public Theater. The audience is invited to come and watch her work and/or to share the space and get some of their own writing work done. During the last fifteen minutes of the performance Parks answers questions the audience might have regarding their own work and their creative process.^[12]

Notable works and awards[link]

The most famous work to emerge from The Public, other than the original production of Hair, is the Michael Bennett musical A Chorus Line, based on the lives and careers of Broadway dancers. The show created such a stir of anticipation among the theatrical community that the entire limited run sold out long before opening night. Demand for tickets was such that the show moved uptown to Broadway's Shubert Theatre, where it remained "one singular sensation" for fifteen sold-out years. Over the years, revenue from the many worldwide productions, both professional and amateur, of the show has been a steady and main source of income for The Public.

The Public Theater has won 42 Tony Awards, 151 Obies, 41 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes. Fifty-four Public Theater productions have moved to Broadway, including Sticks and Bones; That Championship Season; A Chorus Line; For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf; The Pirates of Penzance; The Tempest; Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Topdog/Underdog; Take Me Out; Caroline, or Change; Passing Strange; the revival of HAIR; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson; The Merchant of Venice and "The Normal Heart"

A drawing of the Library published in 1900

Astor Library Building[link]

The Public has been housed in a landmarked Romanesque revival structure at 425 Lafayette Street since 1967, built between 1853 and 1881 as the Astor Library, which later merged with the Tilden and Lenox collections to become the New York Public Library. The library was built by William B. Astor, son of the library's founder, John Jacob Astor. A German-born architect, Alexander Saeltzer, who had been the architect of the Anshe Chesed Synagogue, ^[13][14] designed the building in Rundbogenstil style, then the prevailing style for public building in Germany. Astor funded two expansions of the building toward Astor Place, designed by Griffith Thomas (1856–1869) and Thomas Stent (1879–1881).^[15] Both large expansions followed Saeltzer's original design so seamlessly that an observer cannot detect that the edifice was built in three stages.

In 1920, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society purchased the building. By 1965 it was in disuse and faced demolition. The Public Theater, then the New York Shakespeare Festival, persuaded the city to purchase it for use as a theater. It was converted for theater use by Giorgio Cavaglieri between 1967 and 1976.^[15][16]

The building is a New York City Landmark, designated in 1965.^[17] It was one of the first buildings to be recognized as such by the newly-formed Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City, thanks to Joseph Papp’s perseverance.^[18]

In 2009, The Public began its “Going Public” campaign to raise funds for a major renovation of the historic building.^[19][20] Groundbreaking for the $35 million renovation occurred on March 9, 2010, with notables such as Liev Schreiber and Philip Seymour Hoffman in attendance.^[21] Plans include a renovation of Joe’s Pub; the Pub went on a three-month hiatus during the summer of 2011 to allow for construction.^[22]

Benefits[link]

In late 1995, a benefit show was held (at the Manhattan Center Ballroom) for the Joseph Papp Public Theater, drawing such performers as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Heavy D and Salt-n-Pepa.^[23]

References[link]

The set of Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles? in the Shiva Theater

Notes

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Astor Library

• Official Website
• Official Joe’s Pub Website
• Official Shakespeare In The Park Website
• Official Under The Radar Website
• Official Public Theater Blog
• New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theatre records. Held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• Joseph Papp at the Internet Broadway Database

The Public is the people and society of a nation or community, or the whole of mankind.

The Public may also refer to:

• The Public (band), a rock band from Illinois, United States
• The Public (indie band), an indie rock band from New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
• The Public, a play by Federico García Lorca, known in the original Spanish as El público
• The Public Theater, a theatre company in New York City
• The Public, West Bromwich, an English community arts project based in West Bromwich.

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2010)

Oskar Eustis (born 31 Jul 1958) is the artistic director at the Public Theater and has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the country.

Career[link]

From 1981 through 1986 he was resident director and dramaturg at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, and Artistic Director until 1989, when he moved to the L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director until 1994. Mr. Eustis then served as Artistic Director at Trinity Rep in Providence, Rhode Island for eleven years. In 2005 he took the helm at New York's Public Theater.

He was a professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University, where he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for professional theater training. He also served on the faculty of The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He received an honorary doctorate from Brown in 2001 and currently serves as Professor of Dramatic Writing and Arts and Public Policy at New York University.

Eustis describes his role at the Public as both producer and dramaturge. In a conversation with set designer David Korins for BOMB Magazine, Eustis said, “The producer gives me the power; the dramaturgy gives me the brains.”^[1]

Achievements[link]

Throughout his career, Mr. Eustis has been dedicated to the development of new plays as both a director and a producer. Two plays that he helped develop, Angels in America by Tony Kushner and The Kentucky Cycle, won Pulitzer Prizes. At The Public he directed the New York premiere of Rinne Groff's The Ruby Sunrise. At Trinity Rep, he directed the world premiere of Anthony Clarvoe's Ambition Facing West; the world premiere of Paula Vogel's The Long Christmas Ride Home (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); Homebody/Kabul (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production); the world premiere of Rinne Groff's The Ruby Sunrise; Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director); Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika; as well as world premieres of plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, David Henry Hwang, Emily Mann, Suzan-Lori Parks, Ellen McLaughlin, and Eduardo Machado. He commissioned Tony Kushner's Angels in America at the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and directed its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum.

In 2008, Eustis directed Hamlet for the Public Theater's annual Shakespeare in the Park series. However, Paul's direction of the Shakespearean classic was universally panned by theater critics.^[2][3][4][5]

In 2010, Paul made $219,626 as the Artistic Director of the not-for-profit Public Theater.^[6]

Personal[link]

His real first name is Paul, but Eustis adopted the name "Oskar."

References[link]

1. ^ "David Korins and Oskar Eustis". BOMB Magazine. Jan 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2011.
2. ^ http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117937438
3. ^ http://theater.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/theater/reviews/18hamlet.html
4. ^ http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2008/06/30/080630crth_theatre_lahr
5. ^ http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shb/summary/v026/26.4.ko.html
6. ^ http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4232

1. NY Mag
2. NY Times
3. Village Voice
4. American Theatre Wing

This theatrical biography is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Joseph Papp (June 22, 1921 – October 31, 1991) was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in downtown New York (still located there as of 2011). "The Public," as it is known, has many small theatres within it. There, Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new creations, both plays and musicals. Among numerous examples of these creations 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." At Papp's death, The Public Theatre was renamed The Joseph Papp Public Theatre.

Early life[link]

Papp was born Joseph Papirofsky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Yetta (née Miritch), a seamstress, and Samuel Papirofsky, a trunkmaker.^[1] His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. He was a high school student of Harlem Renaissance playwright Eulalie Spence. Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954 with the aim of making Shakespeare's works accessible to the public. In 1957, he was granted the use of Central Park for free productions of Shakespeare's plays. This legacy of Papp has continued (through 2010) at the open-air Delacorte Theatre every summer in Central Park.

Founder of the Public Theater[link]

Papp spent years of entrepreneurial zeal and dogged persistence promoting his idea of free Shakespeare in New York City. Papp's 1956 production of Taming of the Shrew, outdoors in the East River Amphitheatre on New York's Lower East Side, was pivotal for Papp, primarily because Brooks Atkinson, known as the dean of American theatre critics, went downtown to see it and endorsed Papp's vision in The New York Times. Actress Colleen Dewhurst, who played Kate the shrew, recalled the beginning of the shift in fortune (in an autobiography published posthumously as a collaboration with Tom Viola): "With Brooks Atkinson's blessing, our world changed overnight. Suddenly in our audience of neighbors in T-shirts and jeans appeared men in white shirts, jackets and ties, and ladies in summer dresses. Suddenly we were 'the play to see,' and everything changed. We were in a hit that would have a positive effect on my career, as well as Joe's, but I missed the shouting. I missed the feeling of not knowing what might happen next or how that play would that night move an audience unafraid of talking back."

By age 41, after Papp had established a permanent base for his free Summer Shakespeare performances in Central Park's Delacorte Theater, an open-air amphi-theatre, Papp looked for an all-year theater he could make his own. After looking at other locations, he fell in love with the location and the character of Lafayette Street’s Astor Library. Papp got it, in 1967, at a reported one dollar yearly rental from the City. It was the first building saved from demolition under the New York City landmarks preservation law. After massive renovations, Papp moved his staff to the newly named Public Theater, hoping to attract a newer, less conventional audience to new and innovative playwrights.

At the Public Theater, Papp's focus moved away from the Shakespearean classics and toward new work. Notable Public productions included Charles Gordone’s No Place to Be Somebody (the first off-Broadway show, and the first play by an African American, to win the Pulitzer Prize) and the plays of David Rabe, Tom Babe, and Jason Miller. Papp called his productions of Rabe's plays "the most important thing I did at the Public.^[2] Papp managed to produce plays that spoke to their own time. Just as Rabe's work reflected the concerns of its time (Vietnam and American imperialism), Papp's production in 1985 of Larry Kramer's play "The Normal Heart" dared to address, in its time, the prejudicial political system which was turning its back on the AIDS crisis and the gay community.

As festival designer Ming Cho Lee put it, “With the new playwrights, the whole direction of the theater changed. Joe changed direction and none of us realized for a while that he had changed direction. The Public Theater became more important than the Delacorte. The new playwrights became more interesting to Joe than Shakespeare."

Among the myriad plays and musicals Papp produced, Papp is perhaps best known for four productions which transferred to commercial Broadway runs: the original version of Galt MacDermot's Hair, a star-studded production of The Pirates of Penzance, self-proclaimed black feminist Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf" and the anomaly that was A Chorus Line.

A Chorus Line originated with a series of taped interviews of dancers' reminiscences, down at the Public, overseen by director/choreographer Michael Bennett. Papp had given Bennett the kind of entrepreneurial support for which he was known, trusting Bennett with the time and space to flesh out his dream. Previously, Papp had not kept his producer's hands on the rights to Hair and did not gain from its Broadway transfer. Not so with this one. After this ground-breaking musical (which theatricalized its performers' true-life stories) transferred to a highly lucrative Broadway run, the show's earnings became a continuous financial support for Papp's work. The show received 12 Tony Award nominations and won nine of them, in addition to the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It ran for 6,137 performances, becoming the longest-running production in Broadway history up to that time. Its Tony Award for the Best Musical of the Year 1975 went to Papp, its producer. Its workshop system for developing musicals, which Bennett and Papp had pioneered, revolutionized the way Broadway musicals were created thereafter, and many of the precedents for workshops' aesthetics and contract agreements were set by Papp, Bennett and "A Chorus Line."

Outdoor performances at the Delacorte Theatre[link]

Papp's Delacorte Theatre brought some of the most exciting actors and actresses in America, some celebrated, some not, to outdoor Shakespeare and to New York audiences for free. Among the memorable performances (including some from before Papp had the Delacorte for his Shakespeare) were George C. Scott's Obie-award winning Richard III in 1958; Colleen Dewhurst's Kate, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra (opposite George C. Scott's Mark Antony), and Gertrude; the Hamlet of Stacy Keach opposite Dewhurst's Gertrude with James Earl Jones' King Claudius, Barnard Hughes's Polonius and Sam Waterston's Laertes; Sam Waterston's Hamlet (opposite the Gertrude of Ruby Dee) with the Laertes of John Lithgow and Andrea Marcovicci's Ophelia; the Benedick and Beatrice of Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes in Much Ado About Nothing with Barnard Hughes's Keystone Kops version of Dogberry; the early work of Meryl Streep as Isabella in Measure for Measure; Mary Beth Hurt as Randall Duk Kim's daughter in Pericles; James Earl Jones as King Lear (1973) with Rosalind Cash and Ellen Holly as his wicked daughters; Raul Julia as Edmund in Jones' 1973 King Lear, as Osric to Keach's Hamlet, and as Proteus (in a musical adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona which transferred to a Broadway run). Julia also played Othello with Frances Conroy as his Desdemona and Richard Dreyfuss as Iago. And, in 1968, one year before his breakthrough in The Subject was Roses, Martin Sheen played Romeo.

The New York Shakespeare Festival's Delacorte was not exclusively for Shakespeare. Papp would sometimes vary the summertime fare. In the summer of 1977 Gloria Foster was Clytmnestra in the towering Greek tragedy "Agamemnon" followed by Raul Julia as Macheath in Richard Foreman's production of Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, which later transferred to Lincoln Center. Papp was also a Gilbert and Sullivan lover, and in 1980, to commemorate the centenary of The Pirates of Penzance, he mounted a new staging of the opera at The Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. The show was a sensation, and Papp transferred it to the Broadway stage, where it ran for over 800 performances. It won Tony Awards for Best Revival, Best Director (Wilford Leach), and Best Actor (Kevin Kline). Linda Ronstadt was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical.

Papp's aesthetic included an egalitarian, political vision. He was a pioneer in a commitment to non-traditional casting, using a variety of ethnicities and colors of actors in his new plays and Shakespeare productions. Likewise, partly out of his relationship with his gay son Tony, Papp aligned himself with gay and lesbian concerns in at least two specific instances. He fought anti-obscenity provisions that Congress briefly imposed on the National Endowment for the Arts during the Reagan Presidency, and he chose to produce The Normal Heart, which passionately decried institutionalized "homophobia" as well as Mayor Koch's response to the AIDS crisis.

A complete listing of Festival productions is available in Joe Papp: An American Life by Helen Epstein http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Papp-American-Helen-Epstein/dp/0306806762.

Fostering the Growth of New York Theatre[link]

In addition to founding the New York Shakespeare Festival, Papp played a key role in the fostering of theatre throughout New York, in particular, the development of numerous Off Broadway theatres throughout his years as head of the NYSF. Among the many theatres that Papp supported (often with funds from successful Broadway transfers, such as A Chorus Line) were Theatre for a New Audience, which presented several productions at the NYSF, and the Riverside Shakespeare Company, for whom Papp took a special interest, beginning with the sponsorship of the New York premiere of Brecht's The Life of Edward II of England in 1982, continuing with the financial underwriting of Riverside's New York Parks Tours of Free Shakespeare, including The Comedy of Errors in (1982), Merry Wives of Windsor in 1983, Romeo and Juliet in 1984, and Romeo and Juliet in 1985. In 1983, Papp dedicated newly renovated theatre of The Shakespeare Center with Helen Hayes.^[3]

Humanitarian Fund Created in Papp's Honor[link]

In 2000 the Joseph Papp Children's Humanitarian Fund was founded. The Fund serves as the humanitarian arm of international Jewish children's club Tzivos Hashem's, activities in the Ukraine.

Joseph Papp died of prostate cancer, aged 70. His fourth wife, Gail Merrifield Papp, his full partner in the Public Theater, survived him. His son Tony did not, dying of complications related to AIDS only months before. On April 23, 1992, the Public Theater was renamed The Joseph Papp Public Theater. His biography Joe Papp: An American Life was written by journalist Helen Epstein and published in 1994. He is buried in the Baron Hirsch Cemetery on Staten Island.^[4]

See also[link]

• Edward Cornell

References[link]

External links[link]

• Joe Papp Public Theatre: www.publictheater.org
• Joseph Papp at the Internet Broadway Database

The following is a list of significant men and women known for being the father, mother, or considered the founders mostly in Western socities in a field, listed by category. In most non-science fields, the title of being the "father" is debatable.

Church[link]

Games[link]

Humanities[link]

Military[link]

Nations[link]

Natural and social sciences[link]

Sports[link]

Technology[link]

Fields[link]

Inventions[link]

Towns, cities and regions[link]

Transport[link]

See also[link]

• List of inventors
• Father of medicare
• Founders of statistics

References[link]