History: You can’t do that for free! [dramaturg's desk]

This Week in History: June 13–June 19

It was this week in 1962 that a New York City tradition was born when Central Park’s Delacorte Theater welcomed its first audience for free Shakespeare in the Park.

The date was June 18, 1962, and the theatre’s first performance was The Merchant of Venice, featuring George C. Scott as Shylock. There was electricity in the air at the newly built amphitheatre that would be the home of Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival, and the pavement around the theatre was still drying: female attendees kept getting stuck on the walkways when their stiletto heels—the height of fashion at the time—got caught in the asphalt. And while it may be difficult to imagine New York without free Shakespeare in Central Park at the Delacorte Theater, there were influential people who emphatically felt otherwise.

The main opposition to Papp’s free performances of Shakespeare was an extremely powerful politician, Robert Moses, whose name you may recognize from the various parks and structures that bear his name. Moses, who simultaneously held several positions in the New York City government, had supported the New York Shakespeare Festival’s use of Central Park until January 1959, but he then sent Joseph Papp a letter on March 18, 1959, declaring that the festival could only continue in the park if Papp built a permanent theatre and started charging admission. As Papp recalls in Free for All, “That letter was a shock to me. I thought I had the support of this man, and then this came out of the blue.” Perhaps Moses, who wrote to Howard Lindsay later that summer that Papp was “an irresponsible Commie,” felt that free theatre was dangerously Communistic and therefore must be eradicated, but he very nearly shut down the festival. Due to public outcry, support from other theatre artists, a talented attorney, and Papp’s ferocious tenacity, however, the festival did not disappear in 1959. Instead, the appellate court ruled on June 17, 1959 that Moses had no legal right to require Papp to build a theatre or charge admission.

Interestingly, Moses did an about-face almost immediately after the decision. In August 1959, he petitioned the New York City Planning Commission to provide $250,000 to build a Shakespeare theatre in Central Park. And while Papp preferred to leave the park untarnished and continue using the mobile unit with which the festival had performed in the boroughs and in the park, he realized that there would be definite benefits to constructing a permanent amphitheatre, so he agreed. When Newbold Morris—Robert Moses’s successor as Parks Commissioner—discovered that the city needed an additional $150,000 to build the theatre, Dell Publishing president George Delacorte offered to donate the remaining funds. But it was a surprise when on June 18 Newbold Morris dedicated the Free Shakespeare Theater and declared it would be called the Delacorte Theater. From that point on, the Delacorte and the New York Shakespeare Festival have been key elements in the New York City summer experience.

Russell M. Dembin is a theatre educator and freelance dramaturg. Past production dramaturgy credits include the Drama Desk-nominated world premiere of Underground and the U.S. premiere of GBS at The Clockwork Theatre; the New York premiere of “Finding the Way” at Manhattan Theatre Source; and Annie Get Your Gun at Albany’s Park Playhouse, which featured a historically accurate recreation of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and an accompanying exhibition, “Annie Oakley: A Natur’l History,” in honor of Annie Oakley’s 150th birthday. You can reach him at Russ.Dembin@thecallboard.com.