Joe Papp in Five Acts - A Film Screening, is the story of New York's indomitable, streetwise champion of the arts -- founder of the Public Theater and free Shakespeare in the Park -- who introduced interracial casting to the American stage and nurtured an entire generation of artists, along with their works -- from Hair to A Chorus Line.
Papp spent a lifetime expanding public access to the arts; his mission was to widen the portals of the theater and invite everybody in. He was convinced that both women and minorities, denied power elsewhere in society, could develop it on the stage.
Papp's great accomplishments and his own tumultuous personal history is told by the artists he helped create -- and sometimes tried to destroy -- Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Kevin Kline, James Earl Jones, Olympia Dukakis and Larry Kramer, among others.
