biography
| name: |
Papp, Joe
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| |
originally Joseph Papirofsky
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1921–91)
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| biography:
| Theatre producer and director, born in New York City, New York, USA. The son of an immigrant Russian-Jewish trunk maker and pushcart pedlar, his first experience with theatre was producing navy shows in the Pacific. Back in New York, he worked on off-Broadway plays and in 1954 produced the first of his free, outdoor Shakespeare plays in the Lower East Side. He then moved his free productions to Central Park, founding the still-operating New York Shakespeare Festival, noted for its endless series of Shakespeare plays with often unusual settings, casts, and accents. In 1967 he founded the Public Theatre that was committed to productions not usually performed in the commercial theatre. One such production,Chorus Line, was so successful that it helped support years of less popular productions. Active until his final months, he maintained a love-hate relationship with many of the people who worked with him, but all agreed he was a unique theatrical genius. |
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