AN APPRECIATION : Age of Aquarius Comes to an End : Stage: ‘Hair’ producer Joseph Papp was a cocky, gutsy Brooklynite who virtually changed the face of the American theater.

Joseph Papp’s death Thursday was not unexpected. The founder and charismatic leader of the New York Shakespeare Festival (also known as the Public Theater) had been suffering from cancer for some time. He had put his affairs in order recently by appointing JoAnne Akalaitis his successor at the Public. He was the quintessential fighter, although nothing had shaken his spirit more in the last few months, when he was already ailing, than the death from AIDS of a son he adored. It was the unkindest cut, as hard a blow to Papp as his own death is to an increasingly dysfunctional New York theater scene.

From the church basement on the Lower East Side where the New York Shakespeare Festival began in 1954, to the complex of five theaters and one movie house in the former Astor Library on Lafayette Street where it now resides, is not a great distance as the crow flies. But within this narrow trajectory Papp virtually changed the face of theater.

What was he exactly? Not a particularly good director, not a performer, not just a presenter of plays, but a much rarer animal: a cocky Brooklynite with guts to spare and a passion for the art of theater itself, for what made it great, for what made it grow. And he came equipped with a conviction and savvy designed not to line pockets, but to expand the boundaries of the art form itself. That above all else is what intrigued and challenged him.

Aside from his profoundly knowledgeable love affair with Shakespeare, which led to 35 seasons (and counting) of free Shakespeare in Central Park--in some ways the least spectacular of his achievements--Papp had a eye for spotting, encouraging, employing and promoting many of the theater’s best young artists.

He produced the early work of Sam Shepard, John Guare, David Rabe, David Mamet, Ntozake Shange, David Henry Hwang and George C. Wolfe. He introduced New York to the plays of David Hare and Caryl Churchill and Vaclav Havel.

Among performers he encouraged were Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meryl Streep, Joseph Chaikin, Jeff Goldblum, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, F. Murray Abraham, Christopher Reeve and Tracey Ullman.

From the beginning, he was an iconoclast. His first indoor production at the Public was “Hair.” But then along came “A Chorus Line,” which, created by Michael Bennett under Papp’s sheltering wing, became the Shakespeare Festival’s most famous and remunerative show--as famous for exemplifying the kind of risk-taking Papp stood for, as the novelty at the time of developing a musical through a painstaking series of chancy, laborious workshops. It turned out to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that holds the record for the longest run on Broadway.

But “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” were just the sort of challenges Papp relished. Temperamentally, he had the steely nerves and the faith to bet on the long shots, as long as he could believe in the artistic stakes involved.

Aggressive, irascible, abrasive, he was above all a man who deeply knew his own mind. His pugnacity and forcefulness carried through to a set of personal ethics that never wavered, not to suit his or anyone else’s convenience. From his refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee in the ‘50s to his refusal to comply with grant restrictions from the National Endowment for the Arts in the ‘90s, Papp was always clear about what he stood for: total freedom of expression--artistic or political.

It earned him respect. Papp was a giant. He mixed an openness reflected in the eclecticism of his choices with an uncommon ability to conduct the business of art as skillfully as he conducted the art of art. And he loved walking that perilous tightrope between them. He rode a 35-year crest in which he, perhaps more than anyone else in the nation, was responsible for stoking the theater’s furnace. His death is not only the passing of a man, but the passing of an era.

When comes such another?