Joseph Papp (1921–1991)

If you love Shakespeare, especially Shakespeare performed live, read this small gem of a book. Joseph Papp was a New York producer-director who started the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954. Every Summer a slate of the Bard's plays were performed in New York City's Central Park. The tickets to the productions were free. Out of those productions came stage magic. The Festival, later renamed the Public Theater, served as the launching pad for the careers of many well known Actors and Actresses. The list is amazing. If you want find out who please read, "Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told" by Kenneth Turan and Joseph Papp. "Shakespeare Alive!" gives you a peek at the England Shakespeare called home. It is an eye-opener. Elizabethan England was,for lack of a better word, a semi-police state. Forget "Shakespeare in Love", forget "BlackAdder Part 2", it was a time of religious trials and upheavals, a time of spies and rumors of invasion, it was the England that gave us a writer who spoke, and still speaks to us. Reader, before you begin the play,...read this book.… (mer)