ABSTRACT

This chapter explores Papp's innovative campaign to intertwine theatre with the fabric of New York City. After graduating from high school in 1938, he spent several years adrift, serving in the navy, joining the Communist Party, and studying at the Actors' Laboratory Workshop in Los Angeles, before working as floor manager for CBS Television Studios in New York. As a child of the one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods, he considered the public parks to be among New York's most democratic institutions. The funds for the building were bequeathed by John Jacob Astor, a German-born entrepreneur who made his fortune first in the fur trade and later in New York real estate. In order to find where the theatre would end as a design element and the building begin, it was necessary for us to formulate a basic statement about the New York Shakespeare Festival.