Joe Papp built a stage on a 35 foot portable truck so he could bring Shakespeare to other communities. “I found myself directing all the plays on the mobile unit, because I felt this was the thing I wanted to be closely identified with, to bring Shakespeare to these communities,” said Papp. When the truck fell apart in Central Park, Shakespeare in the Park found its permanent home.
Written Features
Video Features
Clip | When Joe Papp asked Meryl Streep to take over the theater
Clip | How Joe Papp turned a dilapidated building into The Public Theater
Clip | The origins of Shakespeare in the Park
Clip | Representation in theater was important to Joe Papp
Clip | Why Joe Papp thinks the theater should be free for all of us
TRANSCRIPT
- The New York Shakespeare Festival Mobile Theater is here, tonight at 8:00 p.m. at Madison and Ralph Street.
At Madison and Ralph Street. Admission is free.
- It was so characteristic of Joe to think that what was good in the borough of Manhattan would be even better were it to be extended to the outlying boroughs.
And so, Joe developed the mobile theater.
- There was a portable 35 foot trailer truck in which we built a stage, which would unfold.
I arranged to get a sanitation truck to pull this thing around the city.
- And I found myself directing all the plays on the mobile unit, because I felt this was the thing I wanted to be closely identified with to bring Shakespeare to these, these communities.
- What dreadful toll is here?
Eyes, do you see?
How can it be?
- I remember a couple of women who were very distrustful.
Like, you know, 'What are these white people doing?'
- These certain nothing to it is no- - But then the play gets going - And love Helena.
- Oh me!
(audience laughing) - There was some sense of you're gonna see something of your own life here.
Some, some reflection of you, if you just give it a chance.
(crowd laughing) (horns trumpeting) (happy upbeat music) - The culminating venue of this mobile theater, West Central Park.
- We brought this truck and came in about two o'clock in the morning.
I had no permit and there's a cop on a horse.
And he saw me go by.
He kinda looked at me kind of strangely but he must have assumed nobody would come in with a huge 45 foot platform trailer without a permit.
And the, the truck began to fall apart.
I mean, it kept going over to the side.
You see it coming around the corner, everybody go, 'Oh!'
- By the time the company got to Central Park, and the trucks would no longer roll.
And so by sheer inadvertence, the Shakespeare festival wound up on the shore of this little pond in Central Park.
(exciting music)
