Beyond Coteries

The building, an ornate pile of red brick in Manhattan's East Village, was built by Multimillionaire John Jacob Astor to house New York's first public library. It has been designated a federal landmark and, except when the janitor's dog naps on the front steps, its outward aspect is as staid as old money. Inside, however, the atmosphere combines elements of a happening, a commune and a scene from The Time of Your Life. Bicycles wheel through the stately old lobby. Plays are being rehearsed. Youths in jeans scurry around with portfolios. Music echoes from a distant room.

This is New York's Public Theater, which in four years has become something of a city landmark itself. In the raffish, energetic image of its founder-producer, Joseph Papp, the Public Theater has converted the interior of the Astor Library into five theaters, a cinematheque, a photographic workshop, scene shop and offices. It offers an impressively wide range of inexpensive (top ticket: $6) and provocative artistic fare: plays from Shakespeare to experimental new works, films, poetry readings, dance programs and concerts.

Doubting, Questioning. When the Public Theater's new season began last week, the lineup of at least seven full-scale plays and seven workshop productions was typical. Set to open this week, for example, are two dramas: The Black Terror, "a revolutionary adventure story" by Black Playwright Richard Wesley, and Sticks and Bones, by David Rabe, about the family life of a blind Viet Nam veteran. In previews is a musical version of the Greek tragedy Iphigenia. And the workshop is preparing a production of Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities.

"I want a theater that is doubting, questioning," says Papp. "We're not a newspaper. Don't waste your time in the theater if you leave without having something about you changed. Go roller-skating. Make love. But don't go to the theater."

The most famous of Papp's productions is Hair, which opened the first Public Theater season in 1967 and, having transferred to Broadway, is still running there and round the world. Papp has staged--or supervised the staging of --such far-out musicals as Blood and Stomp!, classics like Trelawny of the Wells, and a modern-dress rewrite of Hamlet. He also has a good record of finding new American playwrights, whom he regards as a vital natural resource. "I'd rather do flawed American plays than outstanding foreign plays," he says. Charles Gordone became the first black playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize with his 1969 Public Theater production of No Place to Be Somebody. David Rabe won an Obie for last season's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.

The radical thrust and freewheeling staging of many Public Theater productions have earned Papp a mixed reputation. To some, he is a headline-grabbing sensationalist, a glorified fund raiser; to others, he is the potential salvation of the American theater. All agree he is never dull. New York Times Critic Walter Kerr, reviewing Blood, complained about the way the audience was shoved around and arranged in patterns by the actors. "Please stay away," Papp fired back in a letter to Kerr. "Keep out. I don't want you here. You are incapable of judging and evaluating new works." Papp prefers to regard himself and his Public Theater as just another public service. "I just want equality with garbage collection."

Free Shakespeare. Joseph Papirofsky was born 50 years ago in the tough Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the son of a Polish trunkmaker and a Lithuanian seamstress. His first theatrical venture was an appearance as Scrooge in a first-grade production of A Christmas Carol. He graduated from high school and became a telegraph messenger, shoeshine boy, short-order cook, and chicken "flicker" (plucker). After four years in the Navy, where he staged shows on the deck of an aircraft carrier, he used the G.I. Bill to study at the Actors Laboratory in Hollywood. Later, back in New York, he worked as a television stage manager while organizing Shakespeare productions in a church basement. In 1956 he launched his free Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, which still enlivens the city's summers.

Unabashed Aim. Papp discovered the Astor Library, the ideal housing for his theatrical ideas, while taking a walk one day in 1966. He scraped up the backing to buy it, then nearly lost it when he could not pay a $400,000 renovation bill on top of its $360,000 mortgage. Early this year, he persuaded the city of New York to buy the building and lease it back for $1 a year. This relieved much of the financial pressure on his Theater, whose low ticket prices bring in only 15% of its budget. Further relief came this fall in the form of a National Endowment for the Arts grant of $125,000, the largest it has ever awarded to a drama group.

With such encouragement, Papp is busily widening his orbit. His rock version of Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, which will open on Broadway next month, played successfully last summer in Central Park, then toured the boroughs. Two other Papp productions have gone out on tour nationally. He looks ahead unabashedly to the day when he can establish a national theater. "For years I've been trying to appeal to a broader audience," he says. "The avant-garde is coterie theater. Broadway is on a larger scale, but it is still coterie theater. I'm thinking of the whole country, not just New York."

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