Public Theatre

Public Theatre, New York, on Lafayette Street, was converted by Joseph Papp from the old Astor Library in 1967. Its auditoriums include the three-quarters arena Anspacher, seating 275, which opened in 1967 with the rock musical Hair, later to have a long run at the Biltmore; the flexible Other Stage, seating 108, opened in 1968 and renamed the Susan Stein Shiva in 1984; the Newman, a proscenium-arch theatre seating 300, opened in 1970; and Martinson Hall, a flexible theatre seating 191 opened in 1971. The 150–seat South Hall opened in 1973 as a concert hall; it was eventually renamed the LuEsther Hall and used for plays and other presentations. The Public Theatre stages new American works and the American premières of foreign plays. Among the former were Charles Gordone's No Place to be Somebody (1969), the first Off-Broadway play to win a Pulitzer Prize; David Rabe's Sticks and Bones (1971); Jason Miller's That Championship Season (1972), another Pulitzer Prize-winner; and A Chorus Line (1975), which went on to become the longest running Broadway musical of all time. Foreign imports included Václav Havel's The Memorandum (1968) and Largo Desolato (1986), and many imports from London, including plays by David Hare and Caryl Churchill. In 1988 the theatre staged A Midsummer Night's Dream, the first in a series to include the entire Shakespeare canon performed only by American actors and staged either at the Public Theatre or in the summer at Papp's Delacorte Theatre. The Public Theatre's future has been assured by a permanent subsidy from the City of New York.