In researching the play, I consulted numerous books, archives, newspapers, etc. These are the most important books: Stuart W. Little’s Enter Joseph Papp; Helen Epstein’s superb Joe Papp: An American Life; Kenneth Turan and Joseph Papp’s Free For All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told; Arthur Gelb’s City Room; Stuart Vaughan’s A Possible Theatre; Robert Simonson’s The Gentleman Press Agent: Fifty Years in the Theatrical Trenches with Merle Debuskey; Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York; Anthony Flint’s Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City; Alice Sparberg Alexiou’s Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary; three books by Jane Jacobs, her masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Economy of Cities and Dark Age Ahead.
Articles included: J. M. Flagler’s “Gentles All” (“Onward and Upward with the Arts,” New Yorker, August 31, 1957); Leticia Kent’s “Jane Jacobs, An Oral History Interview” (Toronto, October 1997) and numerous reviews and articles from the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune and the Village Voice.
The press releases for 1958 of the New York City Parks Department proved helpful. The archives of the New York Shakespeare Festival (Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts) proved essential.
The song Bernie and Joe sing at the beginning of Scene 2 is from Within the Gates by Sean O’Casey.
Richard Nelson
Rhinebeck, New York