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A Restoration for Shakespeare’s Home in Central Park

The Delacorte Theater in Central Park will undergo its first renovation since it was built in 1962.Credit...Joe Carrotta for The New York Times

Pray, is there any sweeter rite of summer than an evening of Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater? Do we not swoon at the verdant backdrop of Turtle Pond and Belvedere Castle, more alluring than any scenic designer could conjure?

But hark! Are those raindrops leaking through the weathered stage onto the electrical equipment? Were there indeed 120 actors crammed in a makeshift shed that passed for a dressing room during last summer’s production of “Twelfth Night”? Fear not: A restoration is nigh.

The Public Theater has decided to address the decaying areas behind and below this iconic amphitheater in Central Park, which hasn’t had a major overhaul since it was built in 1962. On Wednesday, the Public announced a $110 million upgrade, designed by the architect Bjarke Ingels, to begin in 2020 and to be completed by 2022.

“It will be the largest project the Public Theater has ever undertaken,” Oskar Eustis, the artistic director, said in a recent interview on a crisp fall day at the Delacorte.

To be sure, the theater has a rustic charm, and loyal patrons will be loath to part with the wooden floorboards that creak, the stadium seats that flip, the let’s-put-on-a-show vibe of summer camp.

The Public is determined to maintain that scrappy spirit — as well as the theater’s original footprint and existing seat number (1,872). “We can do nothing to impair the experience of watching Shakespeare in the park,” Mr. Eustis said, “nothing that makes that feel less glorious than it is.”

The Delacorte has long been showing wear and tear, and its infrastructure is glaringly outdated. The steps are not A.D.A. accessible; the work spaces resemble boxcars; the women’s bathroom is far away and has too few stalls.

“There are women in this city who have never seen the first 10 minutes of a Shakespeare play,” Mr. Eustis joked.

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Patrick Willingham, left, the Public Theater’s executive director, and Oskar Eustis, its artistic director, at the Delacorte. “We’re not ruling anything out,” Mr. Eustis said of the renovation.Credit...Joe Carrotta for The New York Times

Now, finally, the Public Theater is undertaking an effort to make the theater operate “more efficiently and safely,” Mr. Eustis said. “This is not a welcoming space.”

The Delacorte was established by the Public’s founder, Joseph Papp, as a place to bring free Shakespeare to the people. It has since had more than five million visitors and has been home to actors like Meryl Streep, James Earl Jones and Al Pacino.

To date, the Public has done its best to maintain the theater, replacing the wooden stage every three to five years and covering it in the winter with plastic, what amounts to a giant Hefty bag.

The process of reopening the theater for the season begins in February — digging out snow, driving away raccoons, identifying necessary repairs. This dewinterizing process costs about $100,000 a year; the renovation will make the building’s materials more resilient and weatherproof.

In addition to reorganizing the backstage spaces and improving the support systems, Mr. Eustis said he hoped the project would enable the Delacorte to extend its season into the spring and fall.

Right now, the theater has to close after the May-June run of its first production to transition to the second show, which begins in mid-July. The theater also has to cancel three to four performances a summer because of inclement weather, a rate that is expected to increase, given predictions of a warmer, wetter city. Because 95 percent of the theater is in direct sun, the theater is unsuited to matinees. The Public, therefore, is consulting with climatologists and considering ways to make it more hospitable in cold weather. (Heated seats, anyone? A retractable roof?)

“We’re not ruling anything out,” Mr. Eustis said, adding, “nothing that will diminish the experience of sitting in the open air.”

After an extensive search for an architect, Mr. Ingels of the international firm BIG was selected in part for his “environmentally sensitive work,” given the Delacorte’s location in the park, Mr. Eustis said, and past projects involving “natural historic landmarks.” He cited the architect’s underground maritime museum, completed in 2013, which organizes the galleries around an old dock, and his transformation of an original World War II bunker into the new Tirpitz Museum. Both are in Denmark.

“In hiring Bjarke, I knew we were ruling out nothing in terms of what would be technologically possible,” Mr. Eustis said. A design for the Delacorte’s renovation is expected to be completed by the spring.

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The $110 million upgrade, designed by the architect Bjarke Ingels, will begin in 2020 and be completed by 2022.Credit...Joe Carrotta for The New York Times

The mandate is to make sense of the maze of jury-rigged spaces under and adjacent to the stage that are used for technological equipment, actors and offices.

The Public’s executive director, Patrick Willingham, used phrases like “catch-as-catch-can” and “madcap” in describing the current conditions. Quick costume changes take place in crevices concealed by black shower curtains. The ramps leading on- and offstage — known as vomitoriumsare hazardously steep; if mist or rain make them slippery, staff members sometimes have to position themselves to catch the actors hurtling down them.

Indeed, a tour of the area below the Delacorte’s stage reveals overlapping panels of corrugated plastic that are supposed to protect the electrical equipment from the elements that penetrate the sievelike stage above. The warren of underground spaces includes a random assortment of bleacher seats, tarps and piping, as well as a steel spiral staircase to nowhere, resting abandoned on its side in the trees. Looking up toward the ceiling from beneath the stage at one point, Mr. Willingham pointed to patches of blue, noting, “That is, indeed, the sky.”

The renovation will include improved spaces for production, scenery and wardrobe; construction currently takes place on outdoor tables that have to be wheeled back indoors when it rains.

The undertaking is complicated, given the multiple parties involved, including the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, the Central Park Conservancy and the Landmarks Preservation Commission; the city has already committed $9.8 million.

“Shakespeare in the Park represents everything that is great about culture in New York,” said Alicia Glen, a deputy mayor. “The city is making a serious down payment on this project.” She added that the Public had asked the city for a total of about $45 million, which “does not seem unreasonable.”

The Public has raised about $10 million of its own and, in an effort to raise more, will offer several naming opportunities for spaces at the theater — though the Delacorte will still be called the Delacorte, a name Mr. Eustis described as intrinsic to its identity.

“It’s like Fenway Park,” he said. “It’s like Wrigley Field.”

During the summer of 2021, when the Delacorte is expected to go dark for construction, the Public is planning to offer free programming at an undetermined site.

The goals of the renovation are not only to make the theater more comfortable, Mr. Eustis said, but also to bring free Shakespeare to greater numbers of people. For “Twelfth Night,” people were sleeping overnight in the park to line up for tickets the next morning.

“It is that crown jewel because it’s free,” Mr. Eustis said. “And I just want to give away more seats.”

Follow Robin Pogrebin on Twitter: rpogrebin.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Shakespeare’s Summer Stage Needs Fixing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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