Theater Profile

A man named Joseph Papp founded the Public Theater located in lower Manhattan of New York City in 1954.  The Public Theater’s sole intention when it was first founded was to showcase the works and talents of up and coming playwrights and performers.  The first show in this theater was the musical HAIR.  This is a great opening musical because HAIR is a very critically acclaimed musical.  The Public Theater is not just for theatrical programming.  The Public trains the future generations of performers through the use of the Shakespeare Lab; which is an annual summer acting session.

The productions that are performed at The Public Theater have won many awards.  The awards in which they have won include 42 Tony Awards, 151 Obies, 41 Drama Desk Awards, and four Pulitzer Prizes.  Also, fifty four Public Theater productions have moved to Broadway. 

The Public Theater’s mission is to achieve artistic excellence while developing an American theater that is available to all people.  They do this through the productions of new challenging plays and musicals.  This is one of the primary reasons that I picked The Public Theater.  Not only do they put on fantastic shows but also they challenge the up and coming theatrical workers in many ways. 

This theater has great intern opportunities for a fairly wide variety of theatrical jobs.  Some of which include marketing, production, press, associate producer, and executive director.  The Public Theater hopes to bridge the gap between academic education and practice.  What better way to learn and get practice in a work environment than to do so in one of the country’s premier not for profit theaters?

This theater appeals to me because I fell like they have a great mission.  The theater wants to train the next generation of composers, actors and actresses, directors, producers, and many others.  They are much deeper than just showing performances.  Also, they have been around since the fifties and have produced some of the greatest performances ever.  Over fifty of their performances have been moved to Broadway.  Lastly, I love New York City.  I have been to the “Big Apple” several times and each time I find something new to enjoy.  I walked passed this building and had my mother tell me about it but at the time I was not interest, but after finding out more about it and taking this course, I am now ready to go back and go inside.

I also find The Public Theater to be inspiring and admirable for the fact that they have several different out reach programs.   The Public has an outreach program called Shakespeare In the Boroughs, which serves residents of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx.  This program provides residents of these places with free tickets to Shakespeare In the Park.  They will do anything to get people interested in theater.  They also offer sixty percent off of tickets to groups of students, which is a great way to get the younger generation interested in theater.