director for more than twenty years, Wolfe has completely reshaped the
institution—its season, staff, lobby, advertising, and mission—to be more
inclusive of those persons and communities for whom theatergoing has not
been an option. “I want to have the kind of plays in The Public where the
whole building becomes a giant snapshot of where America is,” he said in
his rapid, syncopated cadence. Although Papp, who coined the name The
Public Theater, welcomed the public during his significant tenure, and
introduced a diversity of plays and playwrights, such as David Rabe, Caryl
Churchill, Miguel Pinero, Ntozake Shange, David Mamet, and George C.
Wolfe, the theater’s traditional audience was still essentially what one critic
described as “uptown white.” Wolfe, on the other hand, wanted total
inclusivity. “I want to take populist culture and elevate it, and bring elitist
culture to a populist level,” he stated with missionary zeal. So to change
both the perception and the reality, as an adjunct to producing plays that
addressed the experiences and lore of African-Americans, Hispanics,
Asians, and gays, Wolfe dramatically changed The Public Theater’s
distinctive visual persona, which for twenty years had been based on Paul
Davis’s iconic painterly posters. “I was looking for someone who could give
The Public an in-your-face unity,” he continued. “I wanted something
combustible and dynamic.”
Scher’s debut was somewhat of an improvisation. The day she
learned that she and her Pentagram/New York team had been selected, she
was also informed that Wolfe immediately needed to begin advertising The
New York Shakespeare Festival, The Public’s long-running, free summer
performances of Shakespeare in Central Park. With little time, Scher had
to create a coherent scheme that not only advertised the plays, but also
signaled both the beginning of Wolfe’s era and the Shakespeare Festival’s
relationship to the whole Public institution, comprising Central Park’s
Delacorte Theater, five separate theaters in The Public’s headquarters in the
old Jacob Astor Library, its Broadway productions, and additional public
events, which, Wolfe explained, “were originally tied together by Papp’s
personality,” but now required an organized system. Rather than ponder the
virtues of one design scheme over another, Scher was forced to create what
would become The Public’s visual identity based on one of its many
component parts. Nevertheless, she turned a necessity into a blessing. The
idea to focus solely on typography as the organizing principle was a
response to Wolfe’s mandate to “cleanse the visual palate” and thereby
eschew illustration entirely. Wolfe liked Scher’s earlier Victorian- and
constructivist-inspired compositions done in more or less appropriate
contexts, but nothing could have been a better fit than this assignment; for
here she could revive her favorite Victorian woodtypes—the ones that can
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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