Joe Papp in Five Acts

About The Film

Famous faces of the stage and screen pay homage to a transformative figure of American theater and champion of the arts in this admiring and exuberant American Masters portrait, co-produced by PBS.

Raised from humble beginnings in Brooklyn, the streetwise producer-director Joseph Papp set out to democratize theater for audiences of every ethnic and socioeconomic background, mounting free outdoor Shakespeare plays (to later become New York’s beloved Shakespeare in the Park) and founding the Public Theater. This radical and tumultuous personality introduced colorblind casting, nurtured emerging playwrights, fostered countercultural plays like Hair, and revolutionized commercial theater with the Broadway smash hit A Chorus Line.

JOE PAPP IN FIVE ACTS features scenes from the impresario’s greatest stage works and fond testimonials from such collaborators as Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones and Roscoe Lee Brown.