Joe Papp and the Public Theater

Born 100 years ago today, the great 20th century populist showman Joseph Papp (Joseph Papirofsky, 1921-1991).

Though the name remains known mostly to arts and theatre mavens, I think there is a strong case to be made, if an arguable one, that Papp was the most significant theatre producer of the 20th century. His legacy is so broad and so all-pervasive (and the company he created, the Public Theater, has become so successful) that I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of taking Papp for granted. Most of the people I know wouldn’t be here if not for him. It can be said that the promise of what he created has not been quite fulfilled due to mission creep, and that the country abandoned the visionary journey he proposed (arts for all), but those dreams are still there to be realized when someone with the will and the talent comes along to sell it to the masses. But you can’t have an Einstein without a Newton.

It’s not like nobody ever thought of affordable theatre before. In fact, that’s what defined most vaudeville and nickelodeons back in the day. A nickel for a movie; and the 10-20-30 model for theatre tickets (the numbers referring to the ticket cost in pennies). Naturally, the value of money has shifted drastically over the past century. For a handy frame of reference, a cup of coffee cost a nickel in 1920. Everything back then was about the “Peoples’ Theatre”. And Oscar Hammerstein I even had a mission of making opera accessible to the masses. But then the theatre itself took a hit. There was the Depression, and radio, and television. Theatre survived by catering to a more rarified clientele — the folks who could pony up big bucks for tickets. This meant that the transformative empowerment that theatre uniquely brings was now out of reach of most poor and working class people. Broadway shows became a ritual for upper middle class people from the suburbs. This is not an optimum scenario for democracy.

Papp’s background informs his life’s mission. The son of Jewish immigrants, Papp grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where he was a member of the Young Communists League. He served in the Navy during World War Two, where he knew Bob Fosse, and got some of his first theatre experience directing “vaudeville skits” for his fellow sailors. After the war he studied acting and directing at the Actors Lab in Hollywood (an offshoot of the Group Theatre) on the G.I. Bill. He then went on to tour with the road company of The Death of a Salesman as stage manager, and became a live television stage manager for CBS.

In 1952 Papp was already making history. That year he produced an evening of Sean O’Casey one acts — with non-traditional casting. This was around the beginning of the Off-Broadway movement, a time when it was still beyond usual that some guy that would self-produce a show in New York that had nothing to do with Broadway’s commercial theatre. Sure, he hoped for success, a producer always does, but his aim seems to have been the work itself, not a profit. This is what is (was, but now is again) truly unusual in the theatre. And as for the non-traditional casting — beyond mind-blowing in its day! And to many, it still is, the hate mail continues to flow in whenever anyone includes PoC in a cast or switches up genders. And this was 70 years ago! Papp’s Public has been a major force for inclusion and representation throughout the entirety of its existence.

In 1953, he began teaching Shakespeare workshops in a church basement on the Lower East Side. This led to his first presentation of Free Shakespeare in the Park the following year, which led to the formalization of the New York Shakespeare Festival. “There are public libraries — why not public theatres?” he asked. As I wrote in this earlier post, I myself am a product of programs very much like this, at Trinity Rep in Providence, founded by Adrian Hall, a friend and colleague of Papp’s, who later directed at the Public himself. When I think of free ticket programs for anyone who wanted them, I picture a kind of Utopia containing millions of much better citizens. You can scoff if you will, and maybe you should. The regional theatre I grew up watching was like a factory for producing empathy in school children. But that is because of its power, and power can be misapplied. Artaudused the metaphor of a Plague to describe it, and it could conceivably be that. In Roman times, for example, it certainly was. But the latter would be the equivalent of a commercial theatre. Ultimately the people want sex and violence. But, with philanthropic funding and underwriting by the community itself, with a specific mission to educate, that’s something quite different. The possibilities, if not the resources, are endless.

But this vision proved to go off the rails pretty quickly. From the Central Park bandshell, Papp’s productions moved to the Delacourte Theatre, with its finite number of seats, and thus you had scarcity. And though attendance was and is ostensibly free at these productions…is it really though? Audiences wait for hours in line to obtain tickets — can working people do that? Even if they, I don’t know, ditch work (it’s been known to happen), the opportunity cost (as the economists call it) is greater for a person of modest means than it is for a rich person. Further, many of the seats are reserved for the entities that fund the productions. Some of them are corporations. I’ve attended about half a dozen of the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park productions, usually with some friend who worked for a funder. We didn’t even need to stand in line. I don’t know if you can tell, or care, but we’re already wandering away from democracy at this stage.

In 1967, Papp opened the Public Theater at its current location, across the street from the Astor Place Theatre — where those Shakespeare riots occurred in the 1840s. Speaking of populism and Shakespeare! God, what an exciting time this must have been. This was just a stone’s throw from so much that was starting on Off-Off at the time, nearby places like La Mama, Caffe Cino etc. A lot of the early plays the Public were in the same experimental vein. Though it’s before my time, the experimentation of that era was one of the factors that attracted me to New York. The Public was also the original physical home of Anthology Film Archives, the underground and experimental film movement being very much in dialogue with the theatre of the time.

Then there’s the philosophical confusion of some of the Public’s hit shows, such Hair, A Chorus Line, and Hamilton, going to Broadway. Lawyers and accountants carved out a way for the company to be able to do that while maintaining its not-for-profit status. The elephant in the room is that after those transfers (and even before them) only the rich can afford to attend those shows. There’s a certain cognitive dissonance about needing to cough up hundreds of dollars for a ticket to a show produced by an entity that calls itself the Public Theater. (Addendum: in 2023, the Public announced the cancellation of their Under the Radar program, which was theoretically about presenting off-beat, avant-garde work. Opportunities for non-traditional theatre artists are few enough. But as a producer of variety theatre, I am glad that the Public’s cabaret Joe’s Pub, a favorite haunt of mine, is still going strong).

Something else Papp doesn’t get enough credit for: his “Save the Theatres” effort in the 1980s helped save some of Broadway’s historic venues, at a time when many were destined for the wrecking ball. He was directly responsible, at least in part, for the revitalized neighborhood as it is today. He was one of the few people. I think, who can be claimed by just about every faction of NYC’s highly fractured theatrical community: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, classics, new works, musicals, serious plays, avant-garde plays, political plays. What didn’t he do?

As to some of the choices the company has made. None of us should pretend that the trade-offs are easy. When you consider another company that has stayed fairly true to similarly democratic ideals, such as Theater for the New City (lots and lots of free and low-cost tickets, lots and lots of access for developing artists), you also see a company that is constantly struggling for resources to realize its own aims. There are those who don’t take what they do seriously, and I think that’s unfortunate. I think the results in both cases have to do with the starving of public arts budgets since the ’80s. Both companies would look very different if resources weren’t an issue.

That said, the Public actually still has many educational programs and arts access initiatives that help them realize their mission. And in fact, these programs are presumably kept afloat by some of the other ones that turn a profit. It’s just…the need is infinite. And the visionary who founded the company has been gone now for 30 years. See what the company he built is up to at their official website here.