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| Address | 425 Lafayette Street New York City United States |
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| Coordinates | 40°43′45″N73°59′30″W / 40.72917°N 73.99167°W /40.72917; -73.99167 |
| Designation | New York City Landmark (Astor Library) |
| Type | Off-Broadway |
| Capacity | LuEsther: 160 Martinson: 199 Shiva: 99 Newman: 299 Anspacher: 275 |
| Opened | 1967 |
| Website | |
| www | |
The Public Theater is an arts organization inNew York City. Founded byJoseph Papp, The Public Theater was originally the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954; its mission was to support emerging playwrights and performers.[1] Its first production was the musicalHair in 1967.[2] Since Papp, the theater has been led byJoAnne Akalaitis (1991–1993), andGeorge C. Wolfe (1993–2004), and is currently under Artistic DirectorOskar Eustis and Executive DirectorPatrick Willingham.
The Public's headquarters is located at 425Lafayette Street in the formerAstor Library inLower Manhattan. The building contains five theater spaces, andJoe's Pub, a cabaret-style venue for new work, musical performances, spoken-word artists, and soloists. Additionally, The Public operates theDelacorte Theater inCentral Park, where it has staged "Shakespeare in the Park" performances free of charge since 1954.[3]
Recent productions include:The Merchant of Venice (2010);Here Lies Love (2013);Fun Home (2013);Eclipsed (2015); andHamilton (2015).
In addition to each season of full-scale theatrical productions, The Public produces several different series, festivals, and programs each year.[4]
The Public presented its inaugural Public LAB series in 2008 with an annual series of new plays presented in collaboration withLAByrinth Theater Company. With each Public LAB show, the corresponding speaker series is presented as after-show talkbacks to discuss prominent themes, ideas, and topics in the plays. Several plays that have appeared in the Public LAB series have gone onto full-scale productions, includingTracey Scott Wilson'sThe Good Negro, which ran at The Public in 2009, andBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which had a sold-out, thrice-extendedoff-Broadway run at The Public in spring 2010 and transferred toBroadway that fall.[5]
In 2011, Public LAB expanded to include Public LAB SHAKESPEARE, which is a new platform for The Public's exploration of the Shakespeare canon. This expansion marks the growth of The Public's Shakespeare Initiative and provides more ways for The Public to produce American interpretations of Shakespeare's works. The first production of Public LAB SHAKESPEARE wasTimon of Athens in March 2011, withRichard Thomas playing the title role.[6]
Since 2013, The Public's Mobile Unit has been bringing free Shakespeare performances to various locations throughout New York City's five boroughs, including prisons, homeless shelters, and community centers. The tour concludes at the Public Theater, having previously performed at notable venues such asRikers Island, Borden Avenue's Veteran's Shelter, and The Fortune Society.[7] The Public also launched its inaugural Public Works production in 2013. Public Works combines diverse groups of people throughout the five boroughs of New York City to watch theater, participate in theatrical workshops, and perform in one full-scale Public Works production alongside professional actors at Shakespeare in the Park. Past Public Works productions includeThe Tempest,The Winter's Tale, andThe Odyssey.[8]
The Public Forum, begun in 2010, is a series of lectures, debates, and conversations that showcase leading voices in the arts, politics and the media. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, a senior writer atNewsweek, Public Forum events explore issues raised by plays in The Public's season, as well as the political and cultural headlines of today's world. Notable participants in the series includeStephen Sondheim,Tony Kushner,Arianna Huffington,Alec Baldwin andAnne Hathaway.[9]
The Public hosts the annualUnder the Radar Festival, a festival tracking new theater from around the world.
Over the last 12 years,[when?] The Public's Under the Radar Festival (UTR) has presented over 194 companies from 40 countries. UTR has presented works by such artists asElevator Repair Service,Gob Squad,Belarus Free Theatre, andYoung Jean Lee.[10]
The Public serves as the home of the Emerging Writers Group, which seeks to target playwrights at the earliest stages in their careers. The Emerging Writers Group is a component of The Public Writers Initiative.[11]
The Public also fosters Public Studio, a performance series dedicated to developing the works of new and emerging theater artists. Emerging playwrights get the opportunity to stage a piece somewhere between a workshop and a full production in front of an audience, as an opportunity to gage audience reaction and further develop their work.[12]
The Public Theater invests in theater education, training classical actors through the annual summer acting intensive known as the Shakespeare Lab. The Shakespeare Lab is The Public Theater's professional actor development program that immerses a selected company of professional, mid-career actors in a summer intensive exploring the rigors, challenges, and joys of performing Shakespeare.[13]
The Public Theater hosts educational programs for teenagers such as Shakespeare Spring Break, Summer ShakeUP, and A Midsummer Day's Camp programs, all for teenagers interested in learning about and performing Shakespeare.[14]
Suzan-Lori Parks,Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Master Writer Chair of The Public, debuted her performance pieceWatch Me Work as part of the 2011 Under The Radar Festival. In the performance, Parks worked on her newest writing project in the main lobby of The Public Theater.[15]
A number of The Public's productions have moved to larger Broadway theaters upon the conclusion of their run at Astor Place. The three most commercially successful of these works have beenHair (1967),A Chorus Line (1975), andHamilton (2015).
The Public Theater has won 54Tony Awards, 152Obie Awards, 42Drama Desk Awards and fivePulitzer Prizes. Fifty-five Public Theater productions have moved to Broadway, includingSticks and Bones,That Championship Season,A Chorus Line,For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,The Pirates of Penzance,The Tempest,[when?]Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk,Michael John LaChiusa'sThe Wild Party,The Ride Down Mt. Morgan,Topdog/Underdog,Take Me Out,Caroline, or Change,Passing Strange, the revival ofHAIR,Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,The Merchant of Venice,The Normal Heart,Well,Fun Home,Hamilton, andEclipsed.[citation needed]
The Public has been housed in a landmarkedRomanesque revival structure at 425Lafayette Street since 1967, built between 1853 and 1881 as the Astor Library, which later merged with the Tilden and Lenox collections to become theNew York Public Library. The library was built byWilliam B. Astor, son of the library's founder,John Jacob Astor. A German-born architect,Alexander Saeltzer, who had been the architect of theAnshe Chesed Synagogue,[16][17] designed the building inRundbogenstil style, then the prevailing style for public building in Germany.[citation needed]Astor funded two expansions of the building toward Astor Place, designed byGriffith Thomas (1856–1869) andThomas Stent (1879–1881).[18] Both large expansions followed Saeltzer's original design so seamlessly that an observer cannot detect that the edifice was built in three stages.
In 1920, theHebrew Immigrant Aid Society purchased the building. By 1965, it was in disuse and faced demolition. The Public Theater, then theNew York Shakespeare Festival, persuaded the city to purchase it for use as a theater. It was converted for theater use byGiorgio Cavaglieri between 1967 and 1976.[18][19]
The building is aNew York City Landmark, designated in 1965.[20] It was one of the first buildings to be recognized as such by the newly formed Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City.[21]
In 2009, The Public began its "Going Public" campaign to raise funds for a major renovation of the historic building.[22][23] Groundbreaking for the $35 million renovation occurred on March 9, 2010, with notables such asLiev Schreiber andPhilip Seymour Hoffman in attendance.[24] Plans included a renovation of Joe's Pub; the Pub went on a three-month hiatus during the summer of 2011 to allow for construction.[25] The building re-opened on October 4, 2012, after a renovation designed byEnnead Architects costing $40 million.[26]
In 2013, The Public launched Public Works, which brings together diverse groups of people throughout the five boroughs of New York City to watch theater, participate in theatrical workshops, and perform in one full-scale Public Works production alongside professional actors at Shakespeare in the Park. Past Public Works productions includeThe Tempest,The Winter's Tale, andThe Odyssey.[8] Two productions,Shaina Taub's adaptations ofTwelfth Night andAs You Like It, were later remounted asfull Shakespeare in the Park productions in 2018 and 2022, respectively.[27][28]
| Year | Work performed | Director | Notable cast members | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | The Tempest | Lear deBessonet | [29] | |
| 2014 | The Winter’s Tale | Lear deBessonet | Lindsay Mendez | [30] |
| 2015 | The Odyssey | Lear deBessonet | [31] | |
| 2016 | Twelfth Night | Kwame Kwei-Armah | Nikki M. James,Andrew Kober,Jose Llana,Jacob Ming-Trent | [32] |
| 2019 | Hercules[a] | Lear deBessonet | Jelani Alladin,Roger Bart,Jeff Hiller,James Monroe Iglehart, Ramona Keller,Tamika Lawrence,Krysta Rodriguez, Rema Webb | [33][34] |
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