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| J. Harrison Ghee headshot (Courtesy) |
The Public Forum Returns to the Delacorte With Love, Shakespeare and a Little Chaos
The Delacorte Theater is getting its Monday nights back.
The Public Theater will relaunch its Public Forum series at the newly reopened Central Park venue on Monday, June 15, at 8 p.m., with a free, one-night-only event carrying the suitably breathless title Quick, Bright, Things Come to Confusion, or What We Do for Love.
The evening takes its cue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s immortal comedy of bad decisions, enchanted crushes, wounded friendships and romantic lunacy. More than 400 years after it first sent lovers stumbling through the woods, the play still has plenty to say about why people behave so wildly in the name of affection — and why love, in all its glittering confusion, continues to make fools of nearly everyone.
Frankie J. Alvarez, Grantham Coleman, Micaela Diamond, J. Harrison Ghee, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Matty Maggiacomo and Christian Slater will present the story of the play’s four young lovers, tracing the comic delirium of romance, loyalty and betrayal. They will be joined by Kwame Anthony Appiah, James Shapiro, Ayanna Thompson and Logan Ury for a conversation about the strange, inspired and occasionally humiliating things people do in friendships and love affairs.
The program is curated by Alexa Smith and Jeremy McCarter.
The relaunch also marks the return of a signature Public Theater idea: that conversation and performance need not live in separate rooms. Public Forum, long known for gathering artists, scholars, civic thinkers, and audiences around urgent questions, will now take over Monday evenings at the Delacorte, traditionally the night off for Free Shakespeare in the Park. This summer’s series will pair theatrical excerpts with public conversation, focusing on American voices as the country approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The opening event’s emphasis on love is no small thing. At a moment when public life often feels louder than it is intimate, A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a useful reminder that confusion is not new, that people have always made a mess of wanting and being wanted, and that comedy can sometimes tell the truth faster than solemnity.
The season continues on June 22 with American Sublime, an in-progress theatrical exploration inspired by Amy Sherald’s body of work, with performance excerpts and a conversation about the process of bringing that vision to the stage. James Ijames, Niles Luther, and Anna Deavere Smith are among the participants.
On June 29, Cities Under Siege will offer excerpts from a work in progress by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, developed through a partnership between The Public Theater and The Guthrie Theater. The piece draws on firsthand interviews connected to civic unrest in Minnesota following Operation Metro Surge and examines how cities, institutions and ordinary people respond in moments of crisis.
On August 10, Michael Sandel returns to the Delacorte for Division and Renewal: An Evening With Michael Sandel, a night of public philosophy centered on polarization, meritocracy, dignity and the possibility of civic repair.
The summer series concludes August 17 with a Summer Book Club Celebration with The New York Public Library, inspired by N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. The event will feature readings, commissioned performances and a public conversation, bringing one of the city’s great literary institutions into conversation with one of its great theatrical ones.
Free tickets for each Public Forum event will be available through the line at the Delacorte, evening standby at the Delacorte, a digital lottery through TodayTix, and an in-person lottery at The Public.
For The Public Theater, the Forum’s return to Central Park is more than a programming note. It is a reminder of what the Delacorte has always been at its best: a democratic stage under the open sky, where New Yorkers gather not only to watch, but to argue, laugh, listen, and think together. This time, they begin with love — quick, bright and, naturally, confused.
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