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Joseph Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky; June 22, 1921 – October 31, 1991) was an American theatrical producer and director. He established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in Lower Manhattan. There Papp created a year-round producing home to focus on new plays and musicals.
May 23, 2022 · From 1954 until his death in 1991, Joe Papp brought more theater to more people than any other producer in history. Read about his life.
- Joe Skinner
Papp was among the most dynamic Off-Broadway producers from the 1960s through the 1980s, and he championed many innovative playwrights, including David Rabe and John Guare, and talented actors, including George C. Scott and Meryl Streep, who later achieved prominence.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 3, 2022 · Papp’s rise from the rough-and-tumble Brooklyn streets to free Shakespeare in a church basement to the largest nonprofit theater in America is told in Joe Papp in Five Acts, a new American Masters documentary airing on PBS on June 3, directed and produced by Holder and Thorsen.
- The Visionary and Benevolent Tyrant
- “I Am Interested in A Popular Theater—Not A Theater For The few.” –Joe Papp
- Papp Believed Everyone Had A Right to Shakespeare in Central Park
- “Democracy in The Theater Is ridiculous. I Don’T Believe in it.” –Joe Papp
Shakespeare would be shocked to learn that 400 years after he’d shuffled off his mortal coil, his plays were being presented in the New World for free. Not even a penny for the groundlings?! The Swan of Avon’s shrewd business mind would boggle at such liberality. Joe Papp’s legacy, you see, fixed Shakespeareas its foundation stone, but reached beyo...
In 1950s America, Shakespeare was not exactly a marginal figure, but the idea of putting on his plays in a distinctly American style, for free, outdoors, was audacious. It was also a threat to cultural gatekeepers as diverse as Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and the theater critic Walter Kerr. The former deemed Papp a Communist who would bring rif...
He conceived of theater as a public utility, like tap water, city parks, or the library. In that sense, he resembles the early evangelists for the Internet, who predicted that the information superhighway would usher in a great new age of educated citizens and transparent authority. Let’s agree that Shakespeare in the Park is doing better at improv...
You could say that Papp was the last of the great American actor-managers. Although not an actor, he carried himself like one: proud, pugnacious, painfully alert to how he was represented in the press. He led a troupe of players inspired, cowed and awed by his bravery. They followed Papp wherever he went, even to Central Park when the place was dan...
Joe Papp, founder of The Public Theater, Free Shakespeare in the Park and producer of groundbreaking plays like "Hair," "A Chorus Line" and "for colored girls," created a 'theater of...
Jan 1, 1992 · Joseph Papp was the most powerful and influential man in the American theatre, dominating his world through the force of his own dazzling paradoxical personality. For him, there was no contradiction in the diverse roles he chose to play.
