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Last year, theatre-makers Emily Lim and Dan Canham spent time in Sunderland developing a three-night live performance that sought to capture the north-east cityâs essence and history through music, dance and spoken word. It was Limâs final coup as the director of the National Theatreâs now defunct, UK-wide community programme, Public Acts, and the result was Public Record â a title that nods to both physical media (the audio is stored at the British Library and Sunderland Museum) and to the institutional archive.
âItâs very full-circle,â Lim says, now doing the same for New York Cityâs Public Theatre, whose own Public Works branch inspired the Nationalâs initiative. âThe key difference is that instead of serving the country and national profile, our responsibility here is to serve the city.â
For five nights starting Friday, Lim and Canham will gather a cast of over 100 â including a handful of professional musicians and dancers, but mostly community members from across the five boroughs â at the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park to attempt that same archival feat for a radically different city.
âItâs not just a remake, itâs a complete reinvention,â says Canham, who acts as co-director and choreographer. âSunderland was about civic pride, belonging, the reclaiming of a narrative. In New York, you donât have to reclaim it; the myth of New York is constantly being told.â
With a population almost 30 times larger and drastically different cultural footprints, he says the project has become âmuch more focused on the people and the community as opposed to trying to tell the story of the whole city, which is an impossible featâ.
About 350 New Yorkers were engaged nearly a year ago, through the Public Works programme, to participate in workshops and surveys describing their experiences in the city. The process âbegins and ends with deep listeningâ, says Lim, to find âthe right people who were steeped in life here and culture here to lead and help curate these storiesâ. (The final cast ranges from ages seven to 84.)
She and Canham worked with playwright Lisa Sanaye Dring, whose play Sumo was produced at the Public last year, to sharpen that research into the pieceâs â12-trackâ structure, which Canham says they intentionally developed in Sunderland as âa blueprint version, able to fit different contextsâ. Rather than coming in with ideas of what this New York record would include, Dring was motivated ânot by what I was excited to say, but by what our community is sayingâ.
Tracks are titled after types of public record, like Birth Certificate (where performers detail their âorigin storiesâ), or broader musical terms repurposed for the city in sections like Karaoke, which for New York will substitute I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) to the originalâs Dancing Queen.
The number Tribute Act initially honored Faye Fantarrow, a Sunderland singer-songwriter who died in 2023, aged 21, who Canham says âwas beloved by the whole city and represented a lot for its people. In a city the size and breadth of New York, thatâs kind of impossible.â This Public Record, Lim notes, has âbecome a different interpretation of how we hold collective grief and every cityâs particular relationship to deathâ.
For the After Dark track, meant to honor the cityâs nightlife, the team tapped Papi Juice, a Brooklyn-based collective that centers queer and trans people of color, to live mix the dancier section. The three-person operation has been organizing parties since 2013 and has recently branched into more theatrical spaces like Little Island and Lincoln Center. Lim says they âfeel like theyâre speaking to a very specific moment in the cityâ.
Its resident DJ, Oscar Nñ, is producing the collectiveâs first complete song for Public Record, co-written and performed with the artist Maya Margarita, another multi-disciplinarian who moves fluidly from opening for Beyoncéâs Renaissance tour to acting off-Broadway.
âIt is a very high-energy, clubby, bouncy song, but also there is a certain level of romance, dreaminess, longing,â Nñ says. âA queer dancefloor is something that is so important. We always undermine what it can do or has done for culture, so itâs cool that Emily and Dan were so excited to have a moment just dedicated to the New York City dance.â
Michael Thurber, a longtime Public collaborator and the productionâs music director, enlisted local artists across varied scenes to create original compositions, including the Carnatic violinist Arun Ramamurthy and Louis Cato, who led the house band for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
When it came to the Love Song, the team kept finding themselves in the shadow of an enduring monument. Sunderlandâs slot was taken up by the classic Elvis ballad Canât Help Falling in Love, which functions as its football clubâs unofficial anthem. âFor ages, we were kicking around, âWhat is the love song for New York?â and New York, New York kept coming and going as a thing that, âNo, no, it canât be that,ââ says Lim, referencing the theme from Martin Scorseseâs film of the same name, originated by Liza Minnelli and popularized by Frank Sinatra.
Eventually, Thurber says it became âthe most exciting story, musically. We didnât want to be too on the nose, but then it was Knicks in fiveâ â the basketball teamâs improbable win this summer â âand we came up with this idea of, what if it was sung in Spanish as a statement about the cityâs Spanish-speaking population, and to subversively put a new lens on this song we all know and love?â
The track, now titled Nuevayol as a wink to Bad Bunnyâs own ode to the city, features new arrangements by Latin jazz legend Arturo OâFarrill, and will be sung live by Puerto Rican musician Mireya Ramos.
âIt introduces the idea of peopleâs migration stories,â Lim says of the track, which echoes the pieceâs multilingual nature. âIn so many ways, what makes a New Yorker is the idea of how we hold multiplicity and difference, and the political notion of who gets to call this place home and who gets to belong?â
That richness is reflected in the track Marriage Certificate, which Thurber says includes snippets of music which, âwhenever a certain song comes on, itâs like a whole culture of people know exactly what to do. Highlighting that on a stage like the Delacorte, which normally only does Shakespeare, says these kinds of things are art and culture, and theyâre incredibly bonding forces.â
âItâs sort of beautiful that people that are not from New York are helping us tell its story because that is New York,â he adds. âOne of the big things about New York is that if you decide itâs your home and you respect the city, itâs gonna respect you.â
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