Joe Papp, the street-smart kid from Brooklyn, was a natural fighter. Born Yosl Papirofsky, he sold pretzels, shined shoes and plucked chickens to help his poor immigrant parents. No intellectual, he never went to college, but at 12 he discovered Shakespeare, who became a lifelong passion. Papp became Shakespeare’s ambassador to New York, which he saw as a modern version of Elizabethan London. In 1956, while working as a stage manager for CBS, he spritzed Mayor Wagner into backing free summer productions of Shakespeare in Central Park. He had to fight CBS to win back his job after he refused to testify about his politics to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Papp battled and defeated the omnipotent Robert Moses, New York City’s parks commissioner, who tried to block the idea of free theater. Most recently Papp opposed the new restrictive guidelines for the Arts, turning down $373,000 in grants to protest what he called a new “cultural police.”
Mostly he fought for new ideas, new theatrical energies, new writers. He discovered or developed playwrights such as David Rabe, Christopher Durang, Thomas Babe, John Ford Noonan, John Guare, Wallace Shawn, Elizabeth Swados; actors like George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst, Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline; directors like Michael Bennett, Wilford Leach, A. J. Antoon, George C. Wolfe. Long before multiculturalism became a buzzword, Papp lived it. He produced plays by David Henry Hwang, Miguel Pinero, Ed Bullins, Charles Gordone, Ntozake Shange, and cast black actors like James Earl Jones in Chekhov. When he took critical heat for cross-racial casting, he fought back. Critics, in fact, were among Papp’s favorite opponents. For a while he banned John Simon from his theater; another time he ordered Walter Kerr out of his seat (mild-mannered Kerr wouldn’t budge), fuming that new writers “didn’t stand a chance” with Kerr.
Papp broke new ground with many landmark productions. These were standouts.
The pioneer rock musical, an international hit with Galt MacDermott’s classic score.
of David Rabe’s searing plays about Vietnam.
Michael Bennett’s show, score by Marvin Hamlisch, ran for 15 years.
Ntozake Shange’s breakthrough for black women.
title: “Requiem For A Heavyweight” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Nancy Cundiff”
Holyfield, who finished the fight with one eye badly cut and the other nearly closed from a thumb jab, isn’t eager for a rematch. But he retains his title as the wealthiest puncher alive. Counting the $15 million or more he pulled down last week, he has amassed an estimated $80 million during his two years as champ. Punishment has its rewards.
title: “Requiem For A Heavyweight” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-26” author: “Edward Costello”
Last week five South African security policemen confessed to the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they severely beat Steve Biko, a leading antiapartheid activist, while he was detained in 1977. Biko died of a massive brain hemorrhage. The confessions, aimed at gaining immunity from prosecution, solved a 20-year-old mystery surrounding Biko’s death. As portrayed in the 1987 movie “Cry Freedom,” the case helped inflame world opinion against apartheid. The film was based on a biography of Biko by Donald Woods, a friend who was editor of the Daily Dispatch of East London, near Biko’s hometown. Woods was placed under a form of house arrest for publishing details of the killing, including names of the suspects. He escaped with his family to Britain in 1978. Recently he returned to South Africa to teach at the Institute for Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg.
THIS WEEK’S DEVELOPMENTS brought back the past with a rush–the memory of going with Steve Biko’s widow to the morgue to see his body, being given the run-around by the local police and morgue officials and finally seeing how he had been beaten up. A lump on his forehead dominated his features, and that night I compulsively drew and redrew that wound on page after page of note paper to try to get it exactly right in my mind.
The ultimate shock was the contrast between that most vital of men and the abandoned and broken shell on the morgue table. The Steve Biko I remembered always had a most animated expression on his face, especially when surrounded with friends and brandishing bottles of beer at a party. But my first reaction was sheer disbelief. I had thought not even the South African government would be so dumb as to allow him to be killed. They were not so stupid as to order his death, but it was a huge lapse not to protect him from the Security Police thugs. I never believed that the apartheid government or the Security Police command wanted Biko dead. They knew the harm it would do to them. And ultimately, when the news got out, it was instrumental in gaining U.S. backing for the economic sanctions that cut off the apartheid government’s oxygen–foreign loans and investment. Apartheid “became too expensive,” in the words of Foreign Minister Pik Botha.
The real crime was the government’s callousness in giving its interrogators so much leeway. For 20 years I have believed that Biko must have replied to their baiting in terms that, coming from a black man, enraged them beyond all control. They must have beaten him without regard for the consequences. That, at least, was my theory. Now we hope to test it against the truth. Five of the men I named in my 1978 book–Col. Harold Snyman, Lt. Col. Gideon Nieuwoudt, Capt. Daantjie Siebert and Warrant Officers Ruben Marx and Johann Beneke–have confessed, their lawyer says. Of the remaining four named in 1978, Col. P. Goosen has since died, and Warrant Officers W. Wilken, B. Coetzee and J. Fischer have not yet been heard from, a situation that may change as the commission’s hearings get underway to consider the confessions.
Also deceased among the leading culprits connected with the killing are B. J. Vorster, who was prime minister at the time, and J. T. Kruger, the police minister, who uttered the much-quoted phrase on hearing of Biko’s death: “Biko’s death leaves me cold.” Kruger, a weak character who tried to sound tough to earn the regard of his political-police underlings, joked: “I feel sorry about any death. I suppose I’d feel sorry about my own death.” He also tried to give the impression that Biko had died of a hunger strike and joked: “It is very democratic to allow prisoners the democratic right to starve themselves to death.”
It was the courage of two American publishers, John and Janet Marqusee, that enabled Biko’s friends to blow the whistle on his killers back in 1978, although nothing was ever proven. They ignored lawyers’ warnings of libel and rushed my biography into print with an opening statement that Biko’s killers were one or more of nine names listed in the book. The nine were the only security policemen known to have had access to Biko during his last week of life, when they were members of the interrogation team during his imprisonment without trial–and without access to family, friends or lawyers. There also was pathological evidence that he had died of brain damage resulting from several blows to the head.
Later the official version changed from death following hunger strike to the claim that Biko had hit his head against a wall during a struggle with his interrogators. Under pressure, the government permitted an inquest into the death–although obvious witnesses were not subpoenaed, including Kruger himself and the top police chiefs. The skills of the star barrister Sidney Kentridge exposed as farcical the official version of events. Kentridge so rattled police chief Goosen that he referred to his “interrogation team” as his “assault team” and at one stage conceded: “We don’t work under statute law.”
This week the weight of evidence that has accumulated against those who killed Steve Biko brought at least five of them out into the open, hoping for amnesty. Perhaps more will emerge. The Biko family would rather prosecute the killers, but the Truth Commission route seems best. The amnesty process is not automatic. The Truth Commission will weigh the merits of the confessions to make sure they reveal the truth and represent genuine contrition.
Some see the amnesty process as letting the killers off the hook. One critic said it would be awful to see Steve Biko’s killers go free. Free of what? They will be forever tainted.
