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Joseph Papp 1921 - 1991

Joseph Papp of New York, New York County, NY was born on June 22, 1921 in Kings County, and died at age 70 years old on October 31, 1991 in New York.

Joseph Papp

Joseph Papirofsky (at Birth)

New York, New York County, NY 10003

June 22, 1921

Kings County, New York, United States

October 31, 1991

New York, New York, United States

Male

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Joseph Papp Joseph Papp (1921 - 1991)

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Joseph Papp's History: 1921 - 1991

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06/22

1921

Birthday

June 22, 1921

Birthdate

Kings County, New York United States

Birthplace

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Professional Career

Career Papp founded the New York Shakespeare Festival (now called Shakespeare in the Park) 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. These Shakespeare in the Park productions continue after his death at the open-air Delacorte Theatre every summer in Central Park. Founder of the Public Theater The Joseph Papp Public Theater Papp spent much of his career promoting his idea of free Shakespeare in New York City.[3] His 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 critic Brooks Atkinson endorsed Papp's vision in The New York Times. Actress Colleen Dewhurst, who played the leading character, Kate, recalled the effect of this publicity (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 amphitheatre, 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 rented it, in 1967, reportedly for one dollar per year, 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 for new and innovative playwrights. At the Public Theater, Papp's focus moved away from the Shakespeare classics and toward new work. Notable Public Theater 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. Papp's 1985 production of Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart addressed, in its time, the prejudicial political system which was turning its back on the AIDS crisis and the gay community. Designer Ming Cho Lee commented: "With the new playwrights, the whole direction of the theater changed [but] none of us realized for a while. ... The Public Theater became more important than the Delacorte. The new playwrights became more interesting to Joe than Shakespeare." Among all the plays and musicals that Papp produced, he is perhaps best known for four productions that later transferred to Broadway runs: 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 originated with a series of taped interviews, at the Public, of dancers' reminiscences, overseen by director/choreographer Michael Bennett. Papp had not kept the rights to produce Hair, and he did not gain from its Broadway transfer. But he kept the rights to A Chorus Line, and the show's earnings became a continuous financial support for Papp's work. It received 12 Tony Award nominations and won nine of them, including Best Musical, 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. The show pioneered the workshop system for developing musicals, revolutionizing 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.
10/31

1991

Death

October 31, 1991

Death date

Prostate cancer.

Cause of death

New York, New York United States
Death location

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Obituary

Joseph Papp, who was born poor in a Yiddish-speaking household in Brooklyn and grew up to become the greatest single force in American theater, died Thursday in his New York apartment after a long bout with prostate cancer. He was 70. The founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, which has presented Shakespeare's plays free of charge in Central Park for 30 years, Papp produced A Chorus Line on Broadway. His company, whose productions won three Pulitzer Prizes and 28 Tony Awards, became the largest non-profit theater in the United States. A short, craggy-faced man who was fond of expensive Cuban cigars, Papp affected the style of an impresario but was committed to providing theater to the common people from which he came. "The theater is not an isolated thing that sits in the corner while the world goes by," he told The Orlando Sentinel in 1985. "I've always seen theater as a social phenomenon, and I've always seen it as being for all the people." His productions tried to make that point, from Larry Kramer's drama The Normal Heart, one of the first plays to deal with AIDS, to George C. Wolfe's biting satire of racial stereotypes, The Colored Museum. Papp produced the original version of the musical Hair as well as works by such important modern playwrights as Sam Shepard, David Rabe, Ntozake Shange, Vaclav Havel and John Guare. Rooted in the non-profit theater, he also embraced the commercial. Seventeen of his productions moved to Broadway, including A Chorus Line (which became Broadway's longest-running show), That Championship Season and The Pirates of Penzance. As head of the Shakespeare Festival, Papp was an omnipresent, combative force on the country's theater scene. During the height of the National Endowment for the Arts controversy last year, Papp made headlines by turning down several sizable NEA grants because they would have political strings attached. Last August Papp left his post as the festival's producer and appointed Joanne Akalaitis, a well-known experimental theater director, to succeed him. Akalaitis has faced the burden of a shrinking budget, caused partly by the closing last year of A Chorus Line. But she has continued producing a cycle of all of Shakespeare's plays, which Papp began in 1987. Papp was born Joseph Papirofsky on June 22, 1921, the son of a seamstress and a trunk maker who spoke only Polish and Yiddish. He began his career as a stage manager of small theater companies and began producing Shakespeare free of charge in a Presbyterian church basement in 1954. Two years later he started a free Shakespeare festival in an amphitheater on the East River, and his company moved into Central Park's Delacorte Theater when it was built in 1962. In 1985 and 1986 Papp was the first master teacher to occupy Florida State University's $1 million Hoffman Eminent Scholar Chair in theater. He spent four weeks at the school, where he taught "The Thinking Producer" class and led workshops in acting, directing, theater management and auditioning. While in Tallahassee, Papp was gloomy about the future of theater as American audiences knew it. "I don't see any future in having another musical on Broadway. I don't see any connection with the world we live in. "Broadway is reduced to a few musicals of dubious quality, an occasional serious play that can't sustain itself and an audience capable of paying $45 a ticket for wares that don't warrant that amount of money. Broadway once was a community of artists and talents. That no longer exists." Papp was married four times. His first three marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Gail Merrifield, and four children: Susan Lippman, Michael Faulkner, Barbara Mosser and Miranda Papp Odani. His son Anthony Papp died of complications resulting from AIDS in June. A private funeral service will be held today at New York's Public Theater. A public memorial service will be held at a later date.

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