Vox Populi
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Joan E. Bauer: Great Art is for Everyone
Papp was a communist, raven-haired, charismatic, His mission: free Shakespeare for the people. He borrowed lights & props, scrounged for costumes. Even his wife didn’t know Yussef Papirovsky began as a tough street kid in Brooklyn. Only after rabbis opposed his Merchant of Venice, did he reveal his past. For Colored Girls, Hair, The Normal Heart, A Chorus Line, super-charged Shakespeare. Meryl Streep, Colleen Dewhurst, Kevin Kline, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones. People crowded the Central Park bleachers. many seeing THEATER for the first time. Relentless & visionary, beloved & prickly. Always hustling. He’d die of cancer at 70 just months after his son died of AIDS. Even at the end, he was impatient: Can’t you see I’m trying to die here. What’s the problem?
Copyright 2023 Joan E. Bauer
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021) and the forthcoming Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023). She divides her time between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.
Conceived and founded by Joseph Papp, The Public Theater has been a summer tradition in Central Park for almost 60 years.
Vox Populi 
Thank you so much, as always, Michael
for your generous support of my work!
Joan B.
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You’re welcome, Joan. I feel honored to bring your poems to the Vox Populi community.
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Joe Papp was one of the kindest, smartest, funniest people who I have ever known. A true “Mensch.”
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Thanks, Bob. I wish I’d known him. His contribution to American culture is incalculable.
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2/8Good Morning Nic–I think you will like this piece about Joseph Papp & Shakespeare in the Park. A very colourfuldescription of a man w/obsessed w/his plan.xo love Mom
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She, Joan, is as clear as her subject in this poem and together they combine into a Spring of truth, rare as the watery kind in our thirsty land.
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Joan makes history sing!
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