Gail Merrifield Papp was born in San Francisco into a family with a deep theater lineage. After joining Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in 1965, she became Director of New Works Development for the Public Theater and was responsible for some of its best-remembered productions. These include The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's Tony Award-winning play about the AIDS crisis, for which she received the Human Rights Campaign Arts and Communication Award, and Rupert Holmes's Tony Award-winning Best Musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Gail Merrifield and Joseph Papp were married in 1976. Producer-Director JOSEPH PAPP (1921-1991) is the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, which since 1956 has produced free Shakespeare in New York City. In 1965 he steered the acquisition of the Astor Library landmark building where he created the Public Theater dedicated to new American work, opening in 1967 with the original production of Hair. Papp produced over six hundred plays and musicals which, by 1991, had won more than 200 stage, film, and television awards. Called "the most important force in the English-speaking theater" in the twentieth century, he was also an outspoken champion of human rights and the First Amendment who, in the words of the Congressional Record, "struggled to make New York City and our country a more livable place, to uplift our spirits, to challenge our minds, and see us through to another day."
