The Greatest (Theater) Story Ever Told
Joe [Papp] has been the entrepreneur par excellence, the voodoo man, the magic man, the medicine man who went and found all the people, who played the drum and brought all the folks in from the wilderness and gave them a fire to gather around.....LINDA HUNT (actress, Aunt Dan and Lemon).
If a man can love a man as a brother, I love Joe. But he has complications on top of complications in him; he has the same dark sides we all have....[and] he's experimenting all the time. Just when you think he's going in one direction, he's ready to change horses. And that can hurt people....CHARLES DURNING (actor, That Championship Season).
"Free for ALL, Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told," by Kenneth Turan & Joseph Papp, is my favorite of the hundred or so theater books - I'm a Broadway producer, and blog at [...] - I've read over the past twenty years. This book is the best primer I've seen on how theater truly is created, and how it truly works, both backstage and in the producer's office.
The theatrical process doesn't always work smoothly or happily, as many of us know, but somehow Papp held his productions together, and the stories of how he did that are wonderful indeed.
In fact, my biggest problem in writing this blog was that every time I'd pick up the book again to find a quote or check a fact, I'd start rereading the stories I'd read a couple of days before.
"Free For All" has a curious history: 23 years ago, Turan and Papp contracted to make an oral biography from interviews with Papp and nearly 200 of the people who had been important in his theatrical life.
But when Papp read the first draft, he refused to allow the book to be published. By then his son had been diagnosed with AIDS, and he, himself, with prostate cancer. Turan felt Papp was also upset over some of the comments about him that had come out of the interviews. Turan was stuck with a long manuscript in a box, until years later he was finally able to strike a deal with Papp's widow.
I'm not sure I've ever read a book that was entirely composed of quotes, but the format really works, giving immediacy to each event. Often the reader has a Rashomon experience, as two or more people recount the same meeting or moment in entirely different ways. And the deeply personal feelings expressed by those interviewed make for wonderful insights into them, and into Joe Papp.
My ancestral roots are in Eastern Europe, and I'm very conscious of that, conscious that I'm in the tradition of the Holocaust....I came from a certain kind of poverty level, which was really below that of most of New York's Jews. I always felt that distinction. I've always felt slightly removed from, for instance, the world of Broadway and the Shuberts. I can talk to them, I'll walk with them, but, as Shylock would say, I won't eat with them....JOSEPH PAPP
Briefly stated: Joseph Papp was born in 1921 in Brooklyn, had no money, started producing plays in the Navy, then in basements, toured minimal Shakespearian productions throughout the five boroughs of Manhattan, established Shakespeare in the Park, established the Public Theater, took over and failed at running Lincoln Center Theater, and died in 1991, at the age of 70.
At one point, he was producing for a total of ten New York stages.
Papp sent many productions to Broadway, including Hair, That Championship Season, A Chorus Line, and The Pirates of Penzance. He gave first big breaks to many actors - Colleen Dewhurst, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, and Meryl Streep included; and to many playwrights - David Rabe, Jason Miller, and Wallace Shawn included; and though Papp didn't give William Shakespeare his first big break, he sure did give him one hell of a boost.
Joseph Papp produced some huge hits that were fun to watch, and many more plays that were difficult to watch.
He wanted his audiences to see and experience parts of American life they might otherwise avoid: the heartlessness of the Vietnam War (Pavlo Hummel; Sticks and Bones); child molesters in prison (Short Eyes); mastectomies (Mert & Phil); street kids (Runaways); the outbreak of AIDS (The Normal Heart); and the basic hypocrisy and blindness of society (Aunt Dan and Lemon).
I told the cast, "Once in every ten years or so, a play comes along that fulfills my original idea of what role theater must play in society,"....JOSEPH PAPP [on The Normal Heart].
I was enjoying myself watching "Aunt Dan and Lemon" and at some point somebody got up and stalked out, hitting his heels, and afterwards I asked Joe "God, what was that about?" And he said, "I always like it better if it gets them mad....LINDA RONSTADT (singer/actress, The Pirates of Penzance).
He was passionate, infuriating, shrewd, relentless, soft-hearted (at times), ruthless (at times), mercurial, unstoppable, idealistic, pragmatic, often impossible, brilliant.
"Free For All" contains too many great stories from which to choose, so I'll close with only two, perhaps my favorites:
In 1956, a totally broke Papp was producing THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, for no money, at the East River Park Amphitheater. His Company was so broke that if he didn't get the Chief Drama Critic for the Times, Brooks Atkinson, to come to this unlikely theater and review the show, he`d have to close down his operation.
So he went to the Times' offices, plopped himself down in the lobby, and waited hours for Atkinson to turn up. Determination. Perseverance. Finally, Atkinson arrived, and Papp insisted on their having a meeting. Cojones.
Somehow he convinced Atkinson - Persuasiveness - to come to the show that night, but Atkinson insisted Papp had to drive him there. So Papp picked up the immaculately-dressed critic at the Harvard Club in the only vehicle he had, an old, dirty two-ton truck, and took his chosen reviewer to his Off-Off-Off-Broadway play in its flea-bitten Lower East Side theater.
Atkinson gave the show a rave, and Joe Papp could go on producing.
And, three years later, the immensely powerful Robert Moses, who counted Parks Commissioner among his four City positions, decided the audiences for Papp's Shakespeare in the Park should have to pay admissions, some of which would go to the City. This was against everything Papp stood for, so he took the immensely powerful Robert Moses to court, and - against all odds - won the battle.
There was a moment when I picked up the New York Times and saw that Joe had literally beat the government. He had no name, no political push, nothing. I know a lot of people who have power, but he's probably the only person I know who has real power, because he had it before he had the trimmings....COLLEEN DEWHURST (actress, The Taming of the Shrew).
If you've read this far, you must love the theater, and if you love the theater, you must read "Free For All".
I guarantee you won't regret it.
