From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

From the creation of Shakespeare in the Park to the birth of the public theater,

perhaps no figures created more an amazing non-profit theatrical enterprise than Joe Papp.

The new book, Free for All, written by Ken Turan, an oral history of Papp's world, and those two

entities. We get an astonishing look at this entire world.

Kenny's also a film critic at the L.A. Times.

Thanks for coming back.

One thing that comes across in every chapter of the book is a love of language.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, he had a restless intelligence, and he loved language.

He really loved Shakespeare.

I mean, he was always thinking about it.

He was always talking about it. He was always quoting it.

You know, he liked to direct it.

You know, I mean, he just, you know, his whole life was wrapped up in that.

I don't think it was an accident that, you know, he started with Shakespeare.

I mean, some people say, well, he started with Shakespeare because it was free.

But I think there was more to it than that. One of the great things, too, that he says when he's fighting with Mayor Wagner's head of public resources, is that, you know, the idea that Shakespeare should be free goes along with him for the idea of the public library being free.

Yeah, I mean, it saved him, you know, as a kid.

He had a really, really, really poor childhood, the kind of childhood where his family would

move in the middle of the night with all their belongings to avoid paying rent, you know, the kind of poverty that you don't really, that people don't usually rise that high out of.

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