More than 100 New Yorkers — ages 7 to 84, drawn from a subway conductor to a domestic worker to a military veteran — are stepping onto the Delacorte Theater stage this Labor Day weekend to turn their own lives into a live album performed in front of Central Park audiences. The free production, called Public Record, runs September 4 through September 8 and marks the Public Works program's first performance at the Delacorte since 2023, following the theater's $85 million renovation.
The show, according to Time Out, was selected from a pool of 265 applicants and settled on 100 participants, including 60 returning from an earlier edition and 40 new faces, all sharing personal stories before as many as 1,800 New York neighbors each night. Cast members come from partner organizations including the Brownsville Recreation Center, Children's Aid, Hunts Point Alliance for Children, the Fortune Society, Domestic Workers United, and the Military Resilience Foundation. Directors Emily Lim, Dan Canham, and Pablo Hernandez Basulto worked with constituents from nine organizations over 13 months to shape the piece, per the same account.
Public Record breaks from the pattern Public Works has followed since its founding: rather than staging a community-cast musical adaptation of a classic text, the way it did with its first production, “The Tempest,” at the Delacorte in 2013, this show is built entirely from the words and lives of its non-professional cast. American Theatre notes that Public Works was founded in 2012 by director Lear deBessonet as a civic-minded initiative of The Public Theater, working year-round with partner organizations across all five boroughs. Time Out reports the new show is different from earlier Public Works productions that were mostly musical adaptations of classics, focusing instead on personality and diversity rather than autobiography.
A Newly Reborn Stage for an Old Civic Mission
The performances land inside a Delacorte Theater that barely resembles the one that closed in 2023. The venue, shut throughout 2024 for structural and accessibility work, reopened in July 2025 after an 18-month, $85 million overhaul, as detailed in The Public Theater's release. Ennead Architects designed the rebuilt theater with a sustainable exterior façade made from reclaimed redwood salvaged from decommissioned New York City water towers, along with an 18-foot cantilevered canopy to shield audiences from the elements, Forbes reported.
The renovation also more than doubled the theater's ADA-compliant seating to 34 seats, added two accessible entrance gates, installed an elevator to the control booth, and built climate-controlled, gender-neutral dressing rooms, according to Fisher Dachs Associates, the firm behind the project. Built in 1962, the Delacorte had not seen major capital upgrades since 1999. Hoodline previously covered the venue's return with “Twelfth Night” in the summer of 2025, and Public Record now becomes the first Public Works show to use the rebuilt space.
From Sunderland to Central Park
Public Record is not a New York original. The concept premiered in April 2025 in Sunderland, England — a city of about 300,000 people — where Lim and Canham collaborated with local residents and professional musicians to build a live 12-track album onstage in real time, according to Sunderland Culture. That U.K. edition was co-produced with the National Theatre's Public Acts program and Sunderland Empire, and featured original music by Ross Millard of the band The Futureheads.
Lim's path to the Delacorte runs through her years as an Associate Artist at the National Theatre from 2017 to 2025, where she led the Public Acts program and directed large-scale productions at the Olivier Theatre, according to the National Theatre. The New York production is the second iteration of the project overall, expanding a UK-born idea into an American civic-arts showcase. “Public Record reflects the experiences and realities of people living in New York in 2026,” Lim said, according to Time Out, adding that expanding the project to New York is pushing the boundaries of community-centered devised work.
What's on the Bill
The New York staging organizes its live album into sections themed Birth Certificate, Love Song, Sounds of the City, Here and Now, and Tribute Act, per Time Out's reporting. Michael Thurber oversees all the music, Canham handles choreography, and Lisa Sanaye Dring curated the text drawn from the cast's own stories. Guest artists joining the community ensemble include Arturo O'Farrill, Papi Juice, Arun Ramamurthy, Maya Margarita, Louis Cato, and Mireya Ramos.
The production also folds in cameo appearances from local institutions, including the P.U.S.H. Dance Company, healthcare workers from NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, and staff from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, according to The Public Theater's release. The Public Theater expects to welcome residents from all five boroughs across the run, and the show spotlights immigrants and marginalized people who contribute to New York, per Time Out.
A Closing Note for the Summer — and a Permanent Record
Public Record also closes out The Public Theater's 2026 “Shakespeare for the City” summer series presented by Citizens, a festival that ran from late May through early September and included Central Park stagings of “Romeo & Juliet” and “The Winter's Tale” alongside a five-borough Mobile Unit tour of “As You Like It,” The Public Theater said. Fittingly for a show about memory and record-keeping, the live Central Park performance will be professionally recorded and permanently preserved in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, according to Time Out's report.
Tickets are mostly free and can be obtained through a digital lottery on the TodayTix mobile app, an in-person lottery in the Public Theater lobby, or in person at the Delacorte Theater on the day of the performance. Central Park rules bar early morning queueing inside the park before 6 a.m. for these free shows; early arrivals must instead line up outside the park at Central Park West and West 81st Street until staff escort them to the box office, according to The Public Theater. Day-of tickets are distributed daily at noon.
