When Joseph Papp founded what was first called the Shakespeare
Workshop in 1954, his day job was as a stage manager for CBS
Television. In the space of a few years, Papp’s fledgling troupe, the New
York Shakespeare Festival, had begun to offer free performances in Central Park, and growing city support meant that Papp could at last draw a salary at his festival post.
So when CBS fired him that year, was he relieved? Not the fiery Papp:
He’d been axed because he pleaded the Fifth in testimony before the
House Un-American Activities Committee. So he sued CBS to reinstate
him, won the job back—and then summarily quit.
Playwright Rinne Groff didn’t have this legendary standoff in mind when she wrote The Ruby Sunrise, the first play in Oskar Eustis’ initial
season as artistic director of the Public Theater, the institution into
which Papp’s Shakespeare Festival later grew. But among the things Eustis relishes in Groff’s play, which he is also
directing, is that it’s partly set in a New York
television studio in the early 1950s, and that its
story follows a young woman as she navigates
the challenges facing the new medium, from
corporate-driven compromises to the
McCarthy-era blacklist. “It’s very resonant, doing this play in the house
that Joe built,” says Eustis, whose first season
at the Public also includes premieres by Anna
Deavere Smith, Michael John LaChiusa, David
Grimm, and José Rivera. There are other ways,
Eustis explains, in which this first production
can be seen as a demonstration of the
theater’s role. “You can look at The Ruby Sunrise in microcosm, and there are several things about it that speak to the Public’s identity,” says Eustis.
“Rinne is a young, relatively unknown writer
whom I completely believe in, and I’m thrilled to present her work. And she comes from the
Downtown performance art scene as a writer
and performer with Elevator Repair Service.
Her work has been in the realm of the
experimental, the avant-garde. One of the
missions of the Public has been to bring artists
who foster their work in the hothouse
environment of the avant-garde, and
encourage them to stretch out their accessibility
for a wide audience, and see if that can be
done without reducing the essence of what
they do.” Indeed, “A Home forWriters” was among the
bullet points in Eustis’ much-discussed position
piece in the Village Voice in August, in which
he laid out his ambitious vision for the Public.
Citing Papp’s ideals—reaching a wide
audience with both the best of the classics and
the best work from new writers—and
acknowledging the contributions of his
predecessors, Joanne Akalaitis and George C.
Wolfe, Eustis wrote: “I’m in charge, not of
changing our mission, but of figuring out how
these great values and traditions can be
embodied in 21st-century New York.”
In articulating what the Public stands for,
Eustis contrasted it with what he sees as
regrettably ascendant cultural values. “We
live in a time of capitalist triumphalism, where
any alternative to the commodity-fetishizing
marketplace seems unthinkable, even
laughable,” he wrote. “The great nonprofit
institutions must resist this. The theater is an
event, not an object. It must not only remain
accessible to the broad class of patrons whoare vitally interested in it, but become
accessible to the millions who don’t know the
theater has anything to offer them. We need
to defend the non-commercial nature of our
theater with muscle and vigor.” Eustis also quoted Brecht, who once said,
“Don’t start from the good old days, but the
bad new ones.” So why would Eustis kick off
his first season with a play about television
history, from the medium’s invention in the
1920s to its wide popularization in the 1950s?
Because, as Eustis explains, the play’s tale of
idealism under fire dramatizes the struggle
between the commercial and creative. “That’s what Ruby is about: You have your
artistic principles, your integrity, and what you
want to say,” Eustis says. “Now, how can you
execute them with an impact that will actually
help change the world? The play has a very
complicated view of it. Its fundamental position is that it’s possible to do it, but it
entails learning how to live with losses that are
heartbreaking.” Playwright Groff says she’s drawn to characters“who are struggling with the issue: ‘Is it
possible to change the world?’” The characters
in The Ruby Sunrise face a particularly uphill
battle, as they’re working in a medium that
essentially employs creative people to “sell
detergent.” Groff recalls a comment made by
one of the cast members, Richard Masur, a
veteran of both the tube and the stage who
once served as president of the Screen Actors
Guild: “He said that no one sets out to make a
bad TV show, but that with all the demands
and pressures and audiences you have to
answer to, it’s amazing if anything is ever
good. It’s almost a mistake, a magical mistake,
when something is good.” For his part, Eustis says he finds the play’s
ambivalence moving.“We all love plays where
heroes take big noble stands that define what
they are, but that’s actually not what we do,”
Eustis says.“We spend our lives doing what we
can in compromised circumstances. It’s actually
a very grown-up play.” How appropriate. Joe Papp’s baby is 50 years
old, after all. Visit The Public’s box office at 425 Lafayette St.
or call Telecharge at 212.239.6200 or visit
www.telecharge.com.
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