Fireside Chat, Interview
Oskar Eustis: From "Hair" to "Hamilton": The Promise of The Public Theater
- Oskar Justus has served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater for 13 years, a role he describes as a lifelong realization that his personal values align perfectly with the institution's mission to democratize theater, a mission originally established by Joe Papp in 1954.
- Justus's artistic pivot occurred in the late 1970s in Switzerland, where he recognized his earlier "incomprehensible" avant-garde work was driven by a fear of vulnerability rather than a desire for communication.
- He now prioritizes "story" as the primary tool for artistic equalization, arguing that narratives allow audiences ranging from illiterate groundlings to academic elites to connect on shared human experiences.
- Justus draws a parallel between Shakespeare's necessity to write for a mixed-class Elizabethan audience and modern theater's ability to forge national identity by highlighting commonalities across social divides.
- In 1975, Justus participated in a Living Theater protest in Ann Arbor where he burned all his physical cash to symbolically reject the military-industrial complex, an act that later motivated his shift from radical protest to building sustainable institutions that improve lives immediately.
- He commissions Tony Kushner in 1985 via a National Endowment for the Arts grant to write Angels in America, a project launched just two years before federal funding for individual artists was banned during the "culture wars" under Jesse Helms.
- The core subject of Angels in America was determined to be the AIDS crisis and the character of Roy Cohn, the latter chosen after Kushner saw his name on the AIDS Memorial Quilt as "bully, traitor, victim."
- A pivotal creative conflict occurred regarding the length of Angels in America, where Kushner successfully argued against Justus to expand the play from a single act to a two-evening epic to accommodate the slow, painful reality of character transformation.
- Justus directed the world premiere of Angels in America in 1992, noting the production landed as the national conversation on homosexuality began to shift, though he later handed over production duties to George Wolfe following a "calamitous" transition.
- Justus's first encounter with The Public Theater at age 16 involved an ill-fated audition before Joe Papp that lasted 20 minutes and resulted in a deliberate decision to pursue directing over acting due to a lack of temperament for the vulnerability required by the latter.
- Fun Home began as a small, seven-week production in a 300-seat theater with no expectation of commercial success, despite being based on a graphic novel about a lesbian family and a father's suicide.
- The development of Fun Home involved 17 different opening number drafts by composers Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, described as "carpentry" rather than the immediate inspiration seen in Lin-Manuel Miranda's work.
- Fun Home ultimately migrated to Broadway and won a Tony Award, achieving cultural resonance by presenting a lesbian experience that functions as a universal American narrative, mirroring August Wilson's approach to Black history and Arthur Miller's to Jewish identity.
- Lin-Manuel Miranda initially resisted converting Hamilton into a musical for three years, preferring to treat it as a concept album to relieve the pressure of writing a book for a new musical form.
- The decision to finalize Hamilton as a musical was solidified during a 2009 workshop at Jazz at Lincoln Center where the sing-through revealed the material could no longer exist solely as an album.
- Justus oversaw the development of Hamilton at The Public Theater for two and a half years before its move to Broadway, noting that the production's impact was as transformative as Angels in America.
- Hamilton utilized a specific casting strategy targeting immigrants and descendants of immigrants to physically manifest the meta-message that "America belongs to immigrants," rather than relying on traditional colorblind casting.
- The casting choice resulted in a universal resonance, as the London premiere of Hamilton evoked the same sense of national ownership and belonging in a British audience despite the story's American subject matter.
- Justus views the theater's primary function not as political argumentation but as an intervention that changes hearts by allowing audiences to identify with characters different from themselves during a shared storytelling experience.