CiNE RE-PUBLIC The CiNE Collective’s Portfolio for New York’s Joseph Papp Public Theater For the purposes of this published portfolio, CiNE is: Wayne Chambliss, Co-founder, Nomea, LLC Judy Chang, Dramaturg Gordon Dahlquist, Playwright Jim Findlay, Founder, Collapsable Giraffe Prem Krishnamurthy, Principal, Project Projects David Levine, Author and Project Lead Doris Mirescu, Director Gus Powell, Gus Powell Photography Writer and Project Lead: David Levine. Supplemental research provided by Jamee Freedus The following portfolio expands on an August 2004 letter of application for the posi- tion of artistic director at New York’s Joseph Papp Public Theater. The position became available when George C. Wolfe, the Public’s third artistic director, announced that he was stepping down after eleven years at the theater’s helm.1 Unbeknownst to CiNE at the time, the Public’s executive search committee had already retained the services of Albert Hall and Associates, LLC, to conduct their Facing page: “Public search for a new artistic director. While the engagement of for-profit consultants was Theater” shifts from being a proper neither surprising nor objectionable, the explanation, provided by board chairman name to being a Kenneth B. Lerer, managed to be both: “It doesn’t make any sense,” Lerer told the Vil- caption, a caption lage Voice, “to do this search in public.”2 that describes an unlimited range Now, think about that for a second. of daily activities. It’s called “the Public Theater.” Photo: Gus Powell The building is leased from the city for one dollar a year. Design: Prem So what’s in a name? Krishnamurthy 147 cine What’s In a Name? Joseph Papp, possessed of the unshakeable belief that seventeenth-century plays are vital to the life of a twentieth-century city, inaugurated the New York Shakespeare Festival in the band shell of New York’s abandoned East River Park. When Papp lost that site and could no longer bring the people to free Shakespeare, he opted to take free Shakespeare to the people, on the back of a flatbed truck that brought productions of Shakespeare to all five boroughs. When the truck broke down in the middle of Cen- tral Park, free Shakespeare found its new home. The New York Shakespeare Festival was “public theater” to the extent that it was (a) free and (b) delivered to the five boroughs as a public service.3 But it was also “public theater” in the sense that there was a public demand for it. In Papp’s epic battles with the New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, it was “public opinion” that proved decisive. After Papp had given them a taste, the public clamored for their free Shakespeare, and the public, with some savvy media goosing from Papp, made sure they got it. That is to say, more than simply a matter of ticket prices or locale, Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival was “public” in the sense that the public seemed to have a genuine stake in the outcome. Even so, it would have struck many observers as unusual, in 1967, to read the fol- lowing announcement: “In January, 1966, the New York Shakespeare Festival purchased the old Astor Library Building, a designated City Landmark located at 425 Lafay- ette Street.4 The historic structure is being transformed into a PUBLIC THEATER [their emphasis]. The New York Shakespeare Festival PUBLIC THEATER [their emphasis, again] will present a year-round program of contemporary plays at popular prices. A low-cost ticket policy will continue to attract the vital audiences created and developed by the Festival at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile The- ater touring the boroughs, and the productions in the New York City schools.” The block caps emphasize that public is used here adjectivally, to describe a theater that is public, rather than a theater called “The Public.” Furthermore, the announce- ment depicts 425 Lafayette as simply the indoor, new-plays branch of a larger entity known as the New York Shakespeare Festival. This larger entity aims to infiltrate and address every region of civic life—every borough, every park, every school—and every conflict of civic life, from the draft to racism to poverty, as much as it aims to incorpo- rate everything that could possibly be called “theater”: old plays, new plays, musicals, dance theater, political debates, and rock concerts. That is to say, as far as the New York Shakespeare Festival was concerned, the “Public Theater” in question was New York City, not the building at 425 Lafayette.5 And thus did the New York Shakespeare Festival become unique among the world’s nonprofit stages: neither an imperial theater, like England’s National Theater, which exists to sanctify a cultural tradition; nor a state theater, like Berlin’s Volks- 148 re-public bühne, which exists to question a cultural tradition at the culture’s own expense; nor even an independent theater like Lincoln Center, which exists mainly to administer high-cultural morphine to an ailing upper crust. In mixing private and public funding to create a theater by, for, and of the people, the New York Shakespeare Festival pio- neered the American brand of nonprofit theater: a theater both inclusive of and aggres- sive toward the culture at large. Without it, nonprofit theater as we know it—from the Perseverance to the Taper to the Goodman to New York Theatre Workshop—would not exist. Or rather, we should, say, without 425 Lafayette. Because it can hardly be said that the remainder of Papp’s program—infiltrating the city, broadening the definition of theater, forcing Shakespeare to prove his relevance by bringing him before the peo- ple—was adopted as enthusiastically as Papp’s diversity-based approach to New Play Development. However, it can be suggested that the reason 425’s model proved most congenial to theaters around the country was precisely that 425 was the most conven- tional of Papp’s operations, in its reliance both on box office and on traditional indoor auditoria; the very qualities that made it the least “public” arm of the New York Shake- speare Festival. Thus it is that the Public transformed the nonprofit theatrical landscape, and thus it is that there is currently nothing “public” about American nonprofit theater. Ticket prices are prohibitive; public funding has evaporated; all programming is strictly local- ized; and the nonprofit theaters themselves have come to confuse representing topics of public interest with actually playing a vital role in the civic discourse. All of which has resulted in the general public no longer giving a damn. CiNE is not bemoaning this state of events. Far from it. We believe that if the general public has been willing to tolerate a decline in public funding for theater, it is because theater has failed to make itself essential to the public. To name a venue the “Public Theater” is to pose a perpetual challenge both to the public and to the theater. And if American theater is to thrive in this century, the challenge must be answered in the place where it was first issued. So let’s ask ourselves: what does it mean to be a public theater, in New York, in the twenty-first century? Outreach Initiatives: Premises A public art form expresses the desires, tensions, and aggravations of a culture in its very structure, and does so with such a reckless, thoroughgoing voracity that audiences can no longer tell where they end and the medium begins. We are referring to Sex and the City; we are referring to Resident Evil. Being public is not merely a question of content or admission prices; it’s a ques- tion of reach, and no great mystery: film and TV are central to the civic discourse 149 cine because they are marketed to the public; their advertising is everywhere. A product that is advertised only through mailings, on the other hand, or through the occasional print ad in the newspaper’s arts section, is essentially a boutique commodity, produced by people who are interested in targeting only a coterie audience. Why else do they ignore the promotional possibilities offered by theater’s very form? Unlike TV and film, the- ater can easily expand its civic presence without the expense of conventional advertising, because, unlike TV and film, the public no longer has any interest in defining theater’s limits.6 Furthermore, unlike TV and film, theater can potentially happen everywhere (see photo, page 156). On the strength of its brand—its name and its location are recognizable to all New Yorkers—and on the strength of its mission—make theater public—the Public is in a unique position to redefine what theater is, and thus to expand theater’s activity— and public visibility—beyond 425 Lafayette, beyond the theater listings, beyond theater itself and into the very fabric of the city. Following are three such outreach initiatives. Outreach Initiative (1): Partner Companies We are radicals, but we are not idiots: the Public relies on subscribers for at least 20 percent of its income and, for the moment at least, these subscribers skew conservative. Like CiNE, the Public’s artistic administration would like to broaden its subscribers’ tastes, and in an effort to do so incrementally, without alienating a crucial source of income, they have periodically invited younger, more radical companies (Pig Iron, the Civilians, Division 13) into their black boxes and rehearsal rooms to develop new work. Quite rightly, such workshops do not have the status of full productions, nor do they profit from the full scope of the Public’s promotional apparatus.