Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare! Thank You, Joseph Papp!
It’s William Shakespeare’s birthday, and to honor the occasion, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon asked me to join 49 other bloggers to write about how the Bard has influenced my life (and please check out the others at the website). Having told a couple of stories already about that subject, I figured I would go back to the source and tell you the story of the first Shakspeare play I ever saw.
I grew up in New York City, raised by a mom who availed herself of all that this cultural wonderland had to offer. I saw my first Broadway musical at the age of five, went to the Metropolian Museum of Art on a regular basis, and could tell the difference between Avery Fisher, Alice Tully, and Alvin Ailey before I’d reached fifth grade, so I knew a thing or two about a thing or two.
I also went to a phenomenal middle school—I.S. 383, Phillipa Schuyler Middle School for the Gifted and Talented. With all the current noise about public school, I can say without hesitation that mine was exceptional from beginning to end. And not unlike my mother, the school made great use of the city, despite being all the way out in Bushwick, Brooklyn. At least once a year, we went on a major field trip to some fascinating location, our teachers fighting to ensure that would understand the wealth of resources on our doorstep. This was the school (and class) that helped to turn Dante Smith into Mos Def, so they did a pretty good job.
However, when I was in eighth grade, they told us they were taking us to see Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, and we collectively began to sputter and moan like we’d been told we were getting cavities filled. Our patient teachers, who had just brought us through a unit on the differences between Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, took us through the synopsis of Macbeth, had us act out the witches’ scenes, gave us fake fingers to drop into a fake cauldron, and explained the history not just of Shakespeare but of Joseph Papp and the Public Theater, the producers of the show. By the time we arrived for our mid-week, all-school matinee, we were excited and feeling pretty lucky.
So, roughly 200 eighth graders from Brooklyn settled into a theater on 44th St. on a grey day in January and witnessed magic. I don’t remember the first scene or the first murder or the first moment I knew I would love Shakespeare forever. What I remember was the porter’s scene. In the middle of this gloomy, tension-filled play, this wise-cracker came out and stood center stage and made us roar with laughter. The theater was full of kids, but we got the jokes, we thrilled at the bawdiness, we wriggled at the threats of sin and damnation. It was marvelous! And at that point, the whole play became necessary because Shakespeare had earned our rapt attention by giving us a moment of joy in the midst of darkness and disturbance.
When it was over, we had a talkback with some of the actors, including, to our delight, the actor in the company who played Elton on The Cosby Show. The fact that there were a few black people in the cast, including that one minor celebrity, made it all feel so accessible and so wondrous at the same time. It felt like our play, our moment with Shakespeare, and I wanted back in as soon as possible.
When we got back to school, our teachers told us that we could buy discounted tickets to see by the same company if we wanted to. I scrambled to get three tickets for Valentine’s Day, so I could take my mother and grandmother. This time, I wanted to be the one providing the culture.
When the day arrived, all of us were late, my mom and I coming from Brooklyn, my grandmother from the Bronx. By the time we slid into our seats, the lovers were already meeting for the first time, and I was confused. But I had seen West Side Story, and my mother had explained the plot on the subway, so I just settled in and waited for the kissing and the fighting to start. Before I knew it, I was transported, just as I had been at Peter Pan when Sandy Duncan flew out over the audience. The play was as magical to me as any crowd-pleasing romp full of show tunes. It was passionate and desperate and beautiful, and having entered puberty with my own kind of parent-kicking turbulence, I understood Juliet’s strife and ached over Romeo’s misfortunes.
It was rainy and cold as we left the theater, so we huddled under the marquee for a while after the show, waiting for my grandfather to pick us up. I remember staring at the posters in front of the theater intently, trying to commit Joseph Papp’s picture to memory because I wanted to thank him somehow. I wanted to remember the man who had given me the opportunity to sit in a darkened theater and feel wonder like an adult, not a child. I’d paid $24 dollars for those three tickets, and I’d realized even then that that was a gift from some benevolent force. Shakespeare had gotten under my skin because of that force, and I would always be grateful for the introduction.
