On This Day in History: June 22 He Gave Us The Public Theater & Shakespeare in ...
Producer/director Joseph Papp was born Joseph Papirofsky on June 22, 1921, into a poor family in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He attended Eastern District High School.In 1954 he began staging free performances on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the basement of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church and took touring productions around the city on a flatbed truck. When the truck broke down in Central Park, Papp turned his touring company into Shakespeare-in-the-Park. The group became known as the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Beginning in 1957 he mounted shows every summer in Central Park and in 1962 the Delacorte Theater was built in the park for staging the annual festival.
Papp was the chief figure in converting the Astor Library on Lafayette Street into a theater complex. It opened to the public in 1966 as The Public Theater.
Papp produced a wide range of work from the classical to that of the newest American dramatists, including Hair, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Sticks and Bones, That Championship Season and Cuba and His Teddy Bear. When his A Chorus Line proved a great success it moved uptown to Broadway where it ran for a record 6,137 performances from 1975 to 1990.
Pappâs career encompassed producing and directing more than 400 productions, many of which garnered prestigious awards, including three Pulitzer Prizes, six New York Critics Circle Awards and 28 Tonys. Social issues were of great concern to Papp. He brought many to the attention of theatergoers through his choice of productions and his support of actors and playwrights from minority groups.
Papp died on October 31, 1991. After his death, Lincoln Center received a large collection of his documents, audio and video tapes, and memorabilia.
The biography Joe Papp: An American Life by Helen Epstein (Boston: Little, Brown) was published in 1994.
This article was written by Vernon Parker (1923-2004)
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Where Was Shakespeare Born - News
Eleanor Handley, an Australian-born actress who recently starred as Cressida in a critically acclaimed production of Troilus and Cressida at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, plays the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, Adriana.
Producer/director Joseph Papp was born Joseph Papirofsky on June 22, 1921, into a poor family in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. He attended Eastern District High School.
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A Performance of Macbeth
This is purest drama enhanced by the camera's ability to telescope the human face as it intimately eavesdrops on it's changing expressions, mirroring the turmoil of the inner landscape. All superfluities are dispensed: the murder , the field of battle, the forest on the move. The focus of the direction is on what goes on in the mind. The leading pair have given unforgettable performances taking one as close to the heart of the drama as one's own ability to empathize with life at such an extremity. This beats any other Shakespeare performance on the cinema screen. The darkness of the screen is broken only by the faces and figures of the players and the camera revolves and leaps to scrutinize the faces and the expressions they wear as they melt, ripple or freeze. The faces seem like lamps. It makes you think of Bergman, but the bard's scalding intensity and breadth can hardly be scaled by mere mortals. A youthful McKellan gives a mouth frothing crazed version of Macbeth where one might tend to imagine a middle aged, calculating and philosophical person. Judi Dench has a matronly stoutness and the emotional range to take us through the shades of the metamorphosing anti-heroine. She was made for this role. Once again, this (the play) is a pinnacle of art that leaves one struck with amazement that such could ever have been written by a human being. This is the language of lava: thick, seamy, dank, sulphurous. It is the kind of creation one can imagine to have been born only in a vision or a dream. Shakespeare takes the part of a murderous couple and shows us the human beings dwelling therein. In fact, the drama could not have power or be comprehensible if we did not partake of their natures. Trevor Nunn and his troupe take us one step closer to this unique self image of humankind. Perhaps this is the greatest of the plays.
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