The Theater: Joe Papp: Populist and Imperialist

BY my plays ye shall know me," says Joseph Papp. He has never written a play but he has given life to many, and as an innovative impresario he exerts enormous influence. Each of the works produced in the Downtown Manhattan beehive called the Public Theater bears the Papp stamp. "That's my job," he says. "Oh, yes, that's my job! I'm very good at saving plays, you know." Some would add, at saving the American stage. He himself observes with characteristic modesty: "I am the most important producer on Broadway, off-Broadway—in the U.S."

His ambition is, if possible, even bigger than his ego, and he is now talking about taking theater—his kind of rough, tough, he-man theater—to national audiences, even those that think that Manhattan is an island halfway between Sodom and Gomorrah. Beyond that, there is of course TV, and if Papp has his way, the ether will soon be saturated with drama in the Papp manner. A greasepaint Napoleon, he encompasses the theatrical world. As he opens New York City's 16th annual Shakespeare Festival in Central Park this week with a production of Hamlet starring Stacy Keach, congratulations—even self-congratulations—are indeed in order.

In a year when Broadway has been suffering from an acute attack of the blahs, Papp's Public Theater has aroused and moved audiences with such plays as David Rabe's Sticks and Bones, Jason Miller's That Championship Season and Richard Wesley's The Black Terror. In a season when even the tune seems to have gone out of other musicals, Papp's Two Gentlemen of Verona, a high-spirited rock romp, has been a huge success. A kind of joke among his more profit-conscious colleagues a few years ago, Papp now has one of the hottest tickets in town in Two Gents. To multiply his injury to Broadway's pride, this year his plays monopolized the major theater prizes, taking assorted Tonys and New York Drama Critics Awards.

Stupid Question. Most of all, at a time when the American playwright seems to be an endangered species, Papp is discovering that the authors are in fact there, but that eager, adventurous producers are not. "There are more new plays worthy of production than can be produced in the U.S.," he asserts. "I've got five theaters [in the downtown complex], and I don't have enough space to do the plays I could do in a season here." During this season he has been responsible for eleven new productions; because of his reputation, he is receiving 40 to 50 fresh scripts a week.

"The work he's doing—the nurturing of playwrights—is enormous," says Donald Schoenbaum, managing director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. "His combination of brilliance and gall is untouchable." Both No Place to Be Somebody, Charles Gordone's Pulitzer-prizewinning play about blacks, and Championship Season were turned down by half a dozen other producers before they reached Papp. The original version of Hair was also his. Is the theater dying? Papp snorts at such a stupid question. "You accept the fact that you're alive. I accept the fact that theater exists."