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Health & Safety Policy Update

We are excited to welcome you back to The Delacorte Theater for our 60th Anniversary Season of Free Shakespeare in the Park. We ask that you read and understand the following when accessing tickets.

  • Effective April 19, 2022, The Public requires proof of a complete COVID-19 vaccination to enter The Delacorte and attend performances. This policy will continue until further notice.
  • Complete vaccination is fourteen days following a final dose of the Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Moderna, or Astra-Zeneca vaccine.
  • We will accept proof of vaccination via Excelsior Pass, the NYC Covid Safe Pass, a copy or photo of your CDC vaccination card, and/or a copy or photo of an official immunization record from outside the United States.
  • Face masks are encouraged, but not required while attending performances at The Delacorte.
  • Public Theater staff and artists are subject to a mandatory vaccination and booster policy.
  • All policies are subject to change at The Public’s sole discretion and without notice.
  • Those that do not abide by any health and safety protocols will be denied entry or removed from the facility.

Learn more at Safe in the Park 2022.

We look forward to welcoming you to The Public.

At this time, we no longer require proof of vaccination to access the facility, theaters, and restaurant.

  • A face mask is required for all attendees while watching a performance on Tuesday evening, Saturday afternoon, & Sunday afternoon performances.
  • A face mask is not required but strongly encouraged when attending performances on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, & Sunday evenings.
  • All performances in Joe’s Pub do not require a face mask because food and drink are available throughout the show. A face mask is strongly encourage when not actively eating or drinking.

Learn more at HEALTH & SAFETY, NEXT STEPS.

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PRESS ROOM

Press Releases

THE HARDER THEY COME

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and The Public’s Writer-in-Residence, Suzan-Lori Parks, brings to The Public a new musical adaptation of the 1972 movie, THE HARDER THEY COME. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the breakthrough film, produced and directed by Perry Henzell and co-written with Trevor Rhone, tells the story of Ivan, a young singer who arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, eager to become a star. After falling in love and cutting a record deal with a powerful music mogul, Ivan soon learns that the game is rigged, and as he becomes increasingly defiant, he finds himself in a battle that threatens not only his life, but the very fabric of Jamaican society. Featuring Grammy Award winner Jimmy Cliff’s hits, “You Can Get It If You Really Want” and "Pressure Drop," former Artistic Director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre Tony Taccone directs this new musical, with co-direction by Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo and choreography by Edgar Godineaux.

The complete cast of THE HARDER THEY COME includes Jeannette Bayardelle (Daisy), Shawn Bowers (Ensemble), J. Bernard Calloway (Preacher), Andrew Clarke (Lyle), Eean Sherrod Cochran (Understudy), Tyla Collier (Understudy), Jamal Christopher Douglas (Ensemble), Tiffany Francès (Understudy), Garfield Hammonds (Understudy), Dana Marie Ingraham (Ensemble), Dominique Johnson (Jose), Chelsea-Ann Jones (Ensemble), Natey Jones (Ivan), Dudney Joseph Jr (Ray), Dwight Xaveir Leslie (Understudy), Morgan McGhee (Ensemble), Meecah (Elsa), Jacob Ming-Trent (Pedro), Alysha Morgan (Ensemble), Ken Robinson (Hilton), Housso Semon (Ensemble), Denver Andre Taylor (Understudy), Sir Brock Warren (Ensemble), Carla Woods (Understudy), and Christopher Henry Young (Ensemble).

DARK DISABLED STORIES

Acclaimed writer and performer Ryan J. Haddad makes his off-Broadway playwriting debut with the hilarious and audacious DARK DISABLED STORIES. Haddad’s newest autobiographical play is a series of unforgiving vignettes about the strangers he encounters while navigating a city (and a world) not built for his walker and cerebral palsy. Directed by Jordan Fein, DARK DISABLED STORIES probes implicit ableism and the assumptions we make about people we'll never really know.

The complete cast of DARK DISABLED STORIES includes Ryan J. Haddad, Dickie Hearts, and Alejandra Ospina. 

SHADOW/LAND

Premiering as an audio play at The Public, 2021 Susan Blackburn Prize winner Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s shadow/land returns in Spring 2023 with a stunning live production. As Hurricane Katrina begins her ruin, tensions between duty & desire surface, a levee is brought to its knees & Ruth must wrestle with all that she's ready to let go. shadow/land is a lyrical meditation on legacy, erotic fugitivity, and self-determination. Directed by Lilly Award winner Candis C. Jones, shadow/land is the first installment of a 10-play cycle traversing the Katrina diaspora in an examination of the ongoing effects of disaster, evacuation, displacement, and urban renewal rippling in and beyond New Orleans.

The complete cast of shadow/land includes Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Ruth), Lynnette R. Freeman (Ruth Understudy), Perri Gaffney (Magalee Understudy), Lizan Mitchell (Magalee), Christine Shepard (Grand Marshall), and Joy-Marie Thompson (Grand Marshall Understudy).

PLAYS FOR THE PLAGUE YEAR

On March 13, 2020, as theaters shut their doors and so many of us went into lockdown, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and The Public’s Writer-in-Residence Suzan-Lori Parks picked up her pen and her guitar and set out to write a play every day. What emerged is a breathtaking anthology of plays and songs that chronicle our collective experience and the hope and perseverance that occurred throughout that troubling year. Performed in the intimate music venue, Joe's Pub, PLAYS FOR THE PLAGUE YEAR is a theatrical concert featuring the music and plays of Suzan-Lori Parks, and is both a personal story of one family's daily lives, as well as a sweeping account of all we faced as a city, a nation, and a global community. Niegel Smith directs this life-affirming new work that beams with humor and humanity, bears witness to what we’ve experienced, and offers inspiration as we shape our future.

PLAYS FOR THE PLAGUE YEAR returns to Joe's Pub April 5-30, 2023. Complete casting will be announced soon.

FREE SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK

FREE SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park is one of the cornerstones of The Public Theater’s mission. Since 1962, over five million people have enjoyed more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare and other classical works and musicals. 

THE PUBLIC THEATER

THE PUBLIC continues the work of its visionary founder Joe Papp as a civic institution engaging, both on-stage and off, with some of the most important ideas and social issues of today. Conceived over 60 years ago as one of the nation’s first nonprofit theaters, The Public has long operated on the principles that theater is an essential cultural force and that art and culture belong to everyone. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and Executive Director Patrick Willingham, The Public’s wide breadth of programming includes an annual season of new work at its landmark home at Astor Place, Free Shakespeare in the Park at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Mobile Unit touring throughout New York City’s five boroughs, Public Forum, Under the Radar, Public Lab, Public Works, Public Shakespeare Initiative, and Joe’s Pub. Since premiering HAIR in 1967, The Public continues to create the canon of American Theater and is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda and the upcoming production of Ain’t No Mo’ by Jordan E. Cooper. Their programs and productions can also be seen regionally across the country and around the world. The Public has received 60 Tony Awards, 184 Obie Awards, 56 Drama Desk Awards, 59 Lortel Awards, 34 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 13 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, 58 AUDELCO Awards, 6 Antonyo Awards, and 6 Pulitzer Prizes. publictheater.org

The Public Theater stands in honor of the first inhabitants and our ancestors. We acknowledge the land on which The Public and its theaters stand--the original homeland of the Lenape people. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory. We honor the generations of stewards and we pay our respects to the many diverse indigenous peoples still connected to this land. The Public Theater honors and celebrates the people and legacy of Seneca Village, one of the earliest free Black communities in New York City, which was located in what is now Central Park from 1825–1857.