Long-Delayed Opening for History of, and by, Joseph Papp

Book Review by Patricia Cohen

If Joseph Papp had had his way, “Free for All,” the newly published oral history about him and the \public Theater he helped found, would never have seen the light of day. The memory of how Papp, more than 20 years ago, inexplicably turned on the project he initiated even now causes its author, Kenneth Turan, to wince.

“It was so traumatic when Joe told me the book wouldn’t be published,” he said, remembering Papp’s reaction to the manuscript to which Mr. Turan had devoted nearly two years. “It was like someone died.”

Now a film critic for The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Turan started collaborating with that grand impresario in 1986 on a definitive oral history of the Public and its forerunner, the New York Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Turan elicited memories from Papp of the grinding poverty of his Brooklyn childhood; the leftist ideology that inspired him to produce free theater; his defiant testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s; his surprising victory over the most powerful man in New York, Robert Moses; and the making of hits like “Hair,” “That Championship Season” and “A Chorus Line,” and fiascos like his own production of “Hamlet” (later called “Naked Hamlet”) and “True West,” which the playwright Sam Shepard and the director Robert Woodruff both ended up disowning.

Mr. Turan interviewed about 160 people in all. When he finished whittling down the 10,000 pages of transcripts, he handed Papp a rough and overlong first draft. “He was upset,” Mr. Turan recalled. “There were things he was not happy with.”

Papp refused to allow the manuscript to be published or to give his collaborator more feedback. The two never spoke again.

In retrospect, Mr. Turan thinks it was all bad timing. Papp’s prostate cancer, which would kill him three years later, in 1991, had just been diagnosed, and he had discovered that his son Tony had AIDS. Mr. Turan said that there were a lot of details about Papp’s varied and tumultuous relationships, but that in the end, no one item could be blamed.

“He just wasn’t in the frame of mind to work on it,” he said.

Papp’s widow, Gail Merrifield Papp, agreed. She said that given everything that was happening, her husband just “didn’t have the presence of mind to deal with a collaboration on a first draft.”

As for particular objections, Ms. Papp said, “I think the issue that Joe had was journalistic balance among the voices in the book,” concern with the need for a “rounded picture.”

For years the manuscript lay in a box in Mr. Turan’s garage. Then, about 10 years ago, he finally got up the gumption to send Ms. Papp a letter about revisiting the oral history. “I wrote that this was too good to die,” he said.

The two eventually met and discussed what kind of book they wanted, and Ms. Papp gave the go-ahead. This week Doubleday finally released the streamlined and polished oral history, which lists both Mr. Turan and Papp as authors.

One of Ms. Papp’s favorite stories in the book is about her husband’s running into Wallace Shawn, then a struggling playwright, on a street corner in 1975. As Papp told the story, he asked what Mr. Shawn was doing for a living. Working in the garment district as a shipping clerk, he replied.

“How much are you making a week?” Papp asked.

“A hundred dollars,” Mr. Shawn replied.

Papp told him: “Quit your job.” He would pay him the same amount to write.

“Are you serious?,” Mr. Shawn asked.

“ ‘Quit your job’ ” Papp said. ‘Quit — your — job!’ ”

Ms. Papp said: “I love that. That was very representative of how Joe operated. He was very impulsive, but smart. It was not an institutional move, but a very personal and creative move.”

Papp was devoted to actors and playwrights. Martin Sheen recounts that after Papp tapped him to play Hamlet, other cast members laughed at him because he had never been to college or read the play.

“I didn’t know how to pronounce words, honest to God,” he said. “I’d have to stop in the middle of something and say, ‘What’s a bodkin?’ ”

Papp told him: “Dare to fail, because you’ll never succeed on any level if you’re not willing to fail to the worst degree. So make an ass of yourself.”

Volcanic and emotional, Papp often ended up breaking off from colleagues he had worked with for a long time. Some of these events are told “Rashomon”-style, with overlapping memories.

Other voices include those of the actors George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst, Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd and James Earl Jones; the playwrights David Rabe and David Hare; the directors Bob Fosse and Mike Cichols; the composer Marvin Hamlisch; the former mayors Robert F. Wagner and John V. Lindsay; and dozens of people behind the scenes.

Mr. Turan said opinions were divided as to whether the Public would have been created without Papp. Certainly other collaborators, like the director Stuart Vaughan and Bernard Gersten, the executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater since 1985, were deeply involved in every step of the process. But as Mr. Turan notes, Papp was a zealot about free Shakespeare. “I was consumed by the idea” of starting a theater, Papp says at one point.

Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public since 2004, met Papp once, when he auditioned for a role in the 1976 production of “Henry V.” He didn’t get it.

“What really struck me was the tempestuousness that went into all the great achievements of the Public,” said Mr. Eustis, who described himself as even-tempered and controlled. Since the interviews were conducted before Papp’s death and the mythologizing began, there is “a rawness,” he said, adding:

“This doesn’t sound cleaned up. It’s a very complex portrait that feels incredibly vibrant and fresh.”

Are there lessons for him in this creation story?

The mission of the Public hasn’t changed, Mr. Eustis said, but the institution has matured. “It requires someone of Joe’s temperament to carve it out,” he said, “and perhaps someone of my temperament to keep it going.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 10, 2009
An article on Saturday about a newly published oral history of Joseph Papp and the Public Theater misspelled the surname of a collaborator who helped Papp create the theater. He is Bernard Gersten, not Gerstein.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 11, 2009
An article on Saturday about a newly published oral history of Joseph Papp and the Public Theater misspelled the surname of one of Papp’s collaborators. He is Stuart Vaughan, not Vaughn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/books/07papp.html?ref=books