STAGE

Broadway producer Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival will present all-American productions of the 36 Shakespeare plays over the next six years, it was announced this week. Papp estimates costs for his project at $33 million in order to accommodate such actors as Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, who honed their craft participating in the 34-year-old festival. The plan calls for six plays a year, three to be staged in the 280-seat Anspacher Theater at the company’s Greenwich Village headquarters on Lafayette Street. The other three will be staged during the festival’s summer season at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The first play will be “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Elizabeth McGovern as Helena. It opens Dec. 7.