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When Joe Papp was in junior high school in Brooklyn during the Depression, his teacher read a scene from Julius Caesar.
"It was a speech about rousing people to action and loyalty. I loved that speech," he said. "You blocks, you stones, you mrse than senseless things. Oh, you hard hearts, You cruel men of Rome. I identified with the character. He was protesting some injustice done to someone he cared for. I didn't understand a lot of the things but it sounded so good. And I memorized it. I didn't admitto anybody that I loved Shakespeare. On my block, if you told that to any of those guys, they'd beatyou up."
With a simple yet radical idea that Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, was not the property of the educated, or the middle class, or the upper class, but everybody, Papp took Shakespeare to the people of New York, free of charge. In doing so, he created a cultural phenomenon, Shakespeare in the Park, that has become a summertime staple throughout the country in countless towns large and small, and throughout the world.
Through the New York Shakespeare Festival, he was among the first to give minority actors major Shakespearean and other classic roles. And through The Public Theater, Papp championed the work of contemporary and experimental dramas and musicals including Hair (1967), Sticks and Bones (1971), That Championship Season (1972), A Chorus Line (1975), and for colored girls who have considered suicide /when the rainbow is enuf(1976).
"When I was growing up, Joe Papp was this larger-than-life figure," says Tracie Holder. "He was on the frontlines of every social issue that I held dear.... He turned down $323,000 [from the National Endowment for the Arts], money he desperately needed, rather than give in to this form of censorship. There wasn't anybody else fighting the good fight and standing up for principles, speaking truth to power the way Papp was.... I never fully understood why he was in theater_and then I saw Threepenny Opera. I realized the power of art to engage people around ideas and around issues in a way that's more impactful than politics."
"He believed great art was for everyone and he could engage what he called the...