Book Cover for “Public/Private: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater”

Thrilled to see that Applause Theater and Cinema Books now has the cover and the book catalog page up for Public/Private: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater live on their website. The cover—and a full listing with price, pub date, and ordering info—is also now posted on major book retailing websites—Bookshop.org, BN.com, and Amazon—with many more booksellers to come. Gail Merrifield Papp’s memoir, with many photographs, will be published October 17, 2023.

I first wrote about the project when we sold it to Applause last summer and it was announced in Publishers Weekly. To offer readers of this blog a sense of the book, I’ll quote here from the pitch letter we sent to publishers.

Gail Papp has written an engrossing and highly entertaining book that blends an affecting memoir of her life alongside the founder of the Public Theater Joe Papp with a behind-the-scenes portrait of the influential theater’s dazzling history. She opens with the Public Theater’s beginnings more than a half-century ago in a narrative that spans the decades-long association the couple enjoyed until Joe’s death in 1991. During that span, the Public mounted hundreds of productions, from Shakespeare in the Park to such plays as for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Sticks and Bones, to the musicals Hair and A Chorus Line—with many actors whose careers were launched at the Public, including James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Gloria Foster, George C. Scott, Diane Venora, Morgan Freeman, and dozens of others.*

In a witty conversational style, the author paints a comprehensive portrait of the creative process of one of America’s most acclaimed theater artists, highlighting the innovative ways the Public operated, driven by Joe’s ambition to create a year-round producing home focused on original plays and musicals from new voices, while employing non-traditional casting which made it a home for scores of the most creative people in American pop culture. In Public/Private she traces the founding of the Shakespeare Festival, when its role was for a time limited to small venues around New York City, later moving into Central Park where its Shakespeare renditions became an indelible feature of summer in the city, and the Public’s evolution toward cultural renown and national significance, a beacon for social change.

New aspects of Joe Papp’s many battles with the establishment are also highlighted, from tilts with Robert Moses to theater critics to conservative poohbahs in the US Congress. The scourge of AIDs is also documented, in the form of people close to Joe and Gail, Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, and in the toll it exacted on Joe’s son, Tony.

Her touching remembrances lend the narrative a keen, emotional edge, which will captivate readers and bring a human side to the legendary figure whose theater continues to thrive today, operating at both the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in the theaters on Astor Place and at Joe’s Pub, a live music venue dedicated in his honor.

At a time when America remains divided over issues of race, identity, and sexual orientation, Public/Private reminds us that theater is a powerful force for social change and community-building, a place for people to gather.

*A marvel of the book will be its impressive appendices of more than thirty pages appearing under the headings: Featured Actors, Choreographers, Composers, Directors, and Playwrights.