The New York Shakespeare Festival was established in 1954 as the Shakespeare Workshop - an artist’s workshop founded by Joseph Papp.
Initially, the festival’s aim was to promote Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries free of charge. The productions were held in the basement of the Emmanuel Presbyterian Church and in the Heckscher Theater. Papp wanted to encourage interest in Shakespeare and classic drama, with the idea of creating an annual Shakespeare Festival, and to build an Elizabethan style stage to present Shakespeare’s works. He fought to obtain a subsidized, free theater with financial support from the City of New York. Papp won a court battle with New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses to keep the productions free to the public. In 1957, the Festival’s flatbed truck, which toured the city’s parks and playgrounds, broke down near Belvedere Lake in Central Park. It was on this site that the Delacorte Theater was constructed, which opened in 1962.
Papp never stopped promoting the idea of free Shakespeare. He solicited support from foundations, corporations, political officials, and individual philanthropists. During the sixties, he created the Mobile Theater, which toured the five boroughs and the tri-state area visiting public schools, religious institutions, and civic organizations. In 1965, The New York Shakespeare Festival purchased the landmark Astor Library Building on Lafayette Street. The building was converted into the New Public Theater, which the city funded. In addition, Papp created a new mandate for the Festival: to produce new American plays. The Public Theater not only became the administrative home for the New York Shakespeare Festival, but also became the laboratory for many original plays and musicals by David Rabe, Elizabeth Swados, Thomas Babe, Miguel Piñero, and many others. In 1967, the theater opened with the production of Hair.
During the seventies the Festival became increasingly prolific because of its increasing international reputation and numerous awards. Many of productions moved to Broadway, most notable among them were Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Chorus Line, That Championship Season, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide (When the Rainbow Is Enuf). In 1974, the Festival became a constituent of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, at which time Papp extended the Festival beyond the promotion of Shakespeare into areas of dance, music, and poetry that reflected contemporary issues. During the next four years the Festival produced In the Boom Boom Room, Short Eyes, and The Threepenny Opera. The New York Shakespeare Festival achieved acclaim for its innovative staging of classics and production of new and often controversial plays. In 1976, Papp launched the Festival Latino en Nueva York, which became an annual event.
Papp believed that a new audience would promote a powerful social force. During the late seventies and early eighties, he expanded the Festival into television production with David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones and several Shakespeare plays, then into motion pictures with the adaptations of Pirates of Penzance (1983) and Plenty(1985). The Festival even participated in a theater exchange program with England and the Soviet Union. He also started the Belasco Project for the sole purpose of exposing high school students to Shakespeare on Broadway, while the PITS Program taught them how to write plays.
Papp became ill in the late eighties. He played less of a role in the Festival’s administrative and productive activities. His last major theatrical work was his direction of Bill Gunn’s Forbidden City and he continued his involvement of public advocacy with the controversy over NEA funding until his death on October 31, 1991.