Public Works is the Public Theater’s community outreach program that pairs professionals and amateurs in community productions of classic Shakespeare.
Public Works 2025
Pericles
“Pericles,” a Public Theater Public Works concert experience directed by Carl Cofield (Classical Theatre of Harlem), is a story of losing and rediscovering faith, told in the rousing Gospel style of the Black church; at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights, Manhattan; from Friday-Tuesday, August 29 – September 2, 2025, at 8pm. FREE, first-come, first-serve. 🇺🇸
Classical Theatre of Harlem is a great theatre company. The cast is mostly African American. There are many great churches, temples, and mosques in New York, but if you really want to feel the holy spirit pulsing through you, go to a Black church. You’ll feel it right away. It feels great! It’s also easy to feel the Holy Spirit at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a majestic place that welcomes all peoples.
Synopsis
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (a Phoenician coastal city in modern Lebanon) seeks to marry the king of Antioch’s daughter, but flees after exposing the king’s incestuous relationship. During his travels, he saves the people of Tarsus from famine with grain from his ship.
Shipwrecked, he wins the hand of another king’s daughter Thaisa. During a storm at sea, Thaisa dies giving birth to a daughter, Marina, and the sailors cast her body overboard. But she actually wasn’t dead and her casket washes ashore. Thinking her husband died in the storm, Thaisa becomes a temple priestess. To protect his daughter from the storms, Pericles leaves her with the people of Tarsus who he once helped.
Told that his daughter was killed, the heartbroken Pericles wanders the seas. She has actually been sold to a brothel, but she is so smart that she convinces customers to be virtuous and leave her alone. She becomes a respected tutor and entertainer. When the sad Pericles arrives in town, the local Governor Lysimachus brings Marina to cheer him up. Marina and Pericles realize they are father and daughter. A vision leads Pericles to the temple where his wife is a priestess, so the entire family is reunited. Governor Lysimachus weds Marina.
Meaning
It’s always fun trying to figure out what The Public Theater is saying with its curation of Shakespeare.
In addition to the Shakespeare play, there are several famous Pericles in history:
- Pericles (495-429 BCE) was a Greek politician and general, a great speaker who built the Athenian Empire, and led the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War, which they lost, ending the Golden Age of Ancient Greece. The Golden Age of the United States, the Pax Americana, was 1945-2025.
- In the Bible (Ezekiel 28), the Prince of Tyre is so rich that he becomes arrogant and claims divinity. God punishes him with a military defeat at the hands of a foreign power. The biblical Pericles is a metaphor for Satan, or the evil thoughts in our own minds.
You can take from this what you will. The United States currently has a narcissistic billionaire leader who claims divine providence. But this Pericles is probably a metaphor for the American Family. We try to do good, but make a lot of mistakes along the way. Remember the expression, “Americans will eventually do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.”
Lately many Americans and people around the world have lost faith in our country. The moral of the story is that if we can recover our faith in the American Dream, we can rebuild our society together. It’s not a critique, but rather a curation of hope.
Public Works
Public Works is a Public Theater program that pairs professional and amateur performers in community productions of Shakespeare plays. Theater for the people, by the people, and of the people builds civic connections through culture.
The program was launched in 2013. Past productions include:
- “Pericles” (2025), directed by Carl Cofield at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
- “The Tempest” (2023), directed by Laurie Woolery at the Delacorte Theater.
- “The Winter’s Tale” (2022), directed by Lila Neugebauer at the Delacorte Theater.
- “Merry Wives” (2021), directed by Dez Green-Foster.
- “The Odyssey” (2018), directed by Laurie Woolery at the Delacorte Theater.
- “As You Like It” (2017), directed by Shaina Taub.
- “Twelfth Night” (2016), directed by Shaina Taub at the Delacorte Theater.
- “The Odyssey” (2015), directed by Lear deBessonet.
- “The Winter’s Tale” (2014), directed by Lear deBessonet, starring Lindsay Mendez (Carousel, Merrily We Roll Along).
- “The Tempest” (2013), directed by Lear deBessonet.
Tickets
There are no tickets. Seating is first-come, first-served, so go at least an hour (or two) early if you want a seat.