Lisa Sanaye Dring Joyfully Gathers Us ALL into NYC History

by Andrea Libresco

Shows do not generally begin with greetings from an archivist. Nor do they sport a cast over one hundred.

But “Public Record” is no ordinary show.

Indeed, it is a Public Works production, participatory theater, blending professionals with community members, whose founder, Lear deBessonet, asks, “What does it mean for theater to belong to everyone?”

With exuberant dance and music throughout, “Public Record” is a documentary poem about New York City’s people. Playwright Lisa Sanaye Dring frames New Yorkers’ real-life stories, voices, and experiences shared. Eleven themes that reflect stages of life in NYC—are projected on a screen on the Delacorte Theater stage in Central Park, as groups of folks pass around microphones, telling their stories.

The cast of 130 (!), mostly amateurs, from ages 7 to 84, from all five boroughs, including those who moved here, were born here, and returned here, These New Yorkers represent multiple ethnicities, languages, genders, sexualities, abilities. People who don’t often have a voice in our democracy, who are not on the public record, especially true today, when those in power silence the people’s history at national parks and monuments, in museums and classrooms.

Catnip for this historian, and the show we all need to celebrate our crowded, vital city where, as one cast member puts it: “We know what it is to live in this absurd physical proximity / Which makes you feel like you’re living in other people’s armpits / And sometimes their heartbeat.”

The live band and vast cast capture the music and dance of the diaspora in this vibrant, vivid place: Latin jazz, South Indian classical, club, pop, folk, roots.

Participants remind us of our past, present, and precarious future, recounting NYC sounds:

…sirens reverberating up the street…Music leaking out of passing cars…Merengue, CD101.9, bachata, Bad Bunny…The Mr. Softee truck song…The Hudson lapping against your ferry home… The whir of your neighbor’s AC as it drips onto yours as the summers get hotter and hotter… Pots clanging on balconies during Covid.

These New Yorkers share the ordinary, thrilling, or tragic events they have witnessed:

Being hyper aware on the subway while also looking unbothered…Cheering on some random buff guy crawling on top of the bus because the Knicks just won in five…Or when the towers fell, which will be 25 years this week. The sight of everyone covered in dust.

A cast member’s twins, born this week in Queens, provide an opportunity for those on stage— and in the audience—to express their hopes, whimsical and serious, for these newly-minted New Yorkers:

I hope you find and maintain your joy…fall head over heels with Prince and all of his music…never go hungry…your express train never goes local…have a good life and choose to commit to whatever and whomever you want.

This spectacle literally belongs to everyone. Audience members at the Delacorte are encouraged to use the QR code to add their own 10-word bios to this “Public Record.” The play has been filmed for the NY Public Library Theatre on Film and Tape Archive, where anyone with a Public Library card can watch it.

As one of the cast members calls out at the end of a Spanish-language version of “New York, New York”: “If New York is for any of us, New York is for all.”

Yes. We are here. All of us. And now, we are all in the archives.

“Public Works’ Public Record” by Lisa Sanaye Dring, concept & creative direction by Dan Canham & Emily Lim, original orchestrations & music supervision by Michael Thurber, co-directed & choreographed by Dan Canham, directed by Emily Lim, songs by Ross Millard, and words by Stewart Pringle, by The Public Theater, at Delacorte Theater, in Central Park, New York City.

Info: publictheater.org – to September 8, 2026.

Cast includes: 100 Public Works Community Members.
Performers: Amanda Castro, Niall Jones, Lysis, Raechelle Manalo, Maya Margarita, Alora Tonielle Martinez, Arturo O’Farrill, Papi Juice, Arun Ramamurthy, Mireya Ramos, William Roberson, and Niki Saludez.

Cameos by: P.U.S.H. Dance Company, NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, and New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Banner photo: The Company of “Public Works’ PUBLIC RECORD.” Photos by Marc J. Franklin