Oskar Eustis’s task couldn’t be simpler: He must be all things to all people. When he becomes artistic director of the Public Theater this month, he’ll wear the hats of producer, director, fund-raiser, and all-around cultural pooh-bah. Not an easy job, but an essential one.

The Public, like its new chief, finds itself in a challenging spot. What began as a brash experiment by the pugnacious Joe Papp remains, at its best, home to some of downtown’s most provocative drama. Yet this summer marks the theater’s 50th anniversary: Papp’s upstart outfit has been around even longer than Lincoln Center. With five stages on Lafayette Street, the Delacorte in Central Park, and a pipeline for Broadway transfers, it stands today as one of the most important theaters in the country.

Mr. Eustis seems to be inheriting a healthy institution. After a period of financial woe and creative compromise, the Public had a lively year in 2004. If Mr. Eustis can build on the momentum of his predecessor, George C. Wolfe, while upholding Papp’s bristling ideals, and making the most of the Public’s vast infrastructure, he could go a long way towards fixing what’s broken in the New York theater. No arts executive is in a better position to do so; all of us must wish him well.

Mr. Eustis has yet to say exactly what he plans for the theater, which direction it ought to travel. Here are some ways he could serve the best traditions of the Public, and the city in which it plays so vital a role.

1 Get Shakespeare right. Joe Papp did not found in the Public Theater in 1954. He founded the Shakespeare Workshop, which soon became the New York Shakespeare Festival, which later became the Public Theater/NYSF. Only in the last two years has the name been shortened to plain Public Theater.

The de-Barding of the theater’s name wouldn’t matter so much if the work were up to snuff. But the last few seasons’ Shakespeare programming from the Public has been, at best, undistinguished. Credit where it’s due: The Public has produced plenty of terrific new plays in that time, like “Take Me Out”, “The Story”, and “Well.” Yet so has New York Theatre Workshop – so has Second Stage.

The Public is different, not least because of its unique connection to Shakespeare. It was through Shakespeare that Papp hoped to realize his vision of a truly democratic theater in New York. He produced plays for free in Central Park, and loaded them onto flatbed trucks to tour the five boroughs. That bold vision is jeopardized by mediocre shows that bore everybody, without regard to race, creed, or college education.

The Public is ripe for some canonical triumphs. It would be gratifying to see the next few productions of Shakespeare match top-notch directors with a string of shameless greatest hits. “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” – they’re all overdue in New York just now. This wouldn’t just put Shakespeare back at the heart of the operation, where he belongs. It would lift the spirits of New Yorkers tired of being bludgeoned with the late romances and second-rate revivals of “Richard” plays. Better still, Mr. Eustis might do his country a valuable service.

The last few seasons have supplied unnerving evidence for British superiority at staging Shakespeare. I maintain Americans are at least the equals of the mother country’s directors, but it would be nice to have some fresh evidence. Daniel Sullivan’s upcoming “Julius Caesar” on Broadway may provide it. I would also be thrilled to see Mr. Eustis turn him, Doug Hughes, Joe Mantello, or Jo Bonney loose on the Shakespearean canon. It’s the kind of cultural nationalism Papp might have enjoyed.

2 Central Park: Use or lose it. Free Shakespeare on a summer night is one of the chief joys of being a New Yorker. That’s one reason why Joe Papp fought Robert Moses to build the Delacorte, and why he staged two or three shows there every summer. In the Park, quantity counts: Each show is a new reason to return. When sticky finances required the Public to cut back to one show in 2002, a genuine civic institution was curtailed.

The good news is that, this summer, the two-show schedule resumes. As previously announced, the Public’s anniversary celebration begins with Mr. Wolfe’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the Park. Even more good news: A spokesperson for the Public told me that the second show will also be a Shakespeare, title to be determined. (This also bodes well for priority no. 1, above.)

Financial trouble can drive a producer to all sorts of extremities, but Mr. Eustis should pledge that the Delacorte will see no fewer than two productions each summer. If the Public can’t afford to use the space, an other company or consortium of companies should get the chance.

And while he’s in the business of preserving valuable traditions, Mr. Eustis might also discontinue the use of microphones on the Delacorte stage. The music of Shakespeare’s verse wants an intimacy that amplification destroys. Sure it’s vocally demanding to compete with helicopters and sirens, but that’s what MFA training is for. (Television stars need not apply.) And, yes, it’ll still be noisy, but hey, it’s New York – what else is new?

3 Change the name to Joe’s Lab. Mr. Eustis inherits a plan for some renovations on Lafayette Street. Ac cording to a Public spokesperson, at some point the main entrance to Joe’s Pub will be moved from the street to the theater’s lobby. That’s exciting news, as it will increase the energy and variety of an already exciting space. (At the end of last spring, Mr. Wolfe had the place thrumming: It looked like New York.)

The reorientation shouldn’t stop there. Joe’s Pub ought to make new musical theater a top priority. (Though the artistic director doesn’t program individual engagements on the cabaret stage right now, the offerings there are part of the theater’s mission.) The Public has an extraordinary pedigree in musical theater: In “Hair” and “A Chorus Line,” Joe Papp produced two of the era’s groundbreaking shows. Then there’s the facility itself. The small stage and intimate room are just right for stripped-down work that could move to more traditional stages around town.

Joe’s Pub has been making encouraging noises lately. “People Are Wrong” played a short stint there before its full production at the Vineyard last fall. This spring, Billy Porter’s “Ghetto Superstar” plays a full six-week run, one that is part of the official Public season. If Mr. Eustis makes engagements like these a regular part of his work, who can say what the space might yield?

4 Steal from the National. As we pass its halfway point, the major news story of the theatrical decade has to be Nicholas Hytner’s success at the Royal National Theater in London. Mr. Hytner hasn’t just done the things you expect a national theater to do – hire the best artists, balance national treasures with new work, change perceptions of what’s possible – but also what you hope the Public would do. Onstage and in the audience, the National is attracting new, young, and diverse faces.

Smart programming aside, Mr. Hytner has benefited from a deal with Travelex, which has sponsored L10 tickets for the Olivier, the National’s largest stage. Suggesting that the Public find a similarly generous sponsor is a lot easier to say than to do, I realize, especially when so many corporations are already investing in free Shakespeare in the Park. But maybe a new artistic director’s arrival will give some civically minded New York company the final push it needs to drop the ticket price in one of the five theaters. Instead of the current $50, maybe it would be, say, $10 – the price of a movie ticket. Good karma aside, the press attention would be tremendous. Consider: I’m 3,000 miles away, I’m not even sure what it does, and here I am writing about Travelex again. Travelex Travelex Travelex.

If any New York arts executive ought to take this challenge seriously, it’s the successor to Joe Papp. As he was struggling to turn the Astor Library into a theater, Papp wrote to Mayor Wagner, “A Public Theater in New York City … must be priced at levels which allow the non-theatergoing public to attend.” That potentially comic tautology tells you something about the populist producer – something magnificent, I mean.

5 And introducing the Public Players. The natural condition of the stage actor is being a member of an acting ensemble, attached to a company, where he may find steady, rewarding work. To people affiliated with the better theaters throughout much of the civilized world, this would not be an especially remarkable statement. In America, it’s nearly a blasphemy.

If Mr. Eustis wanted to put the Public back at the cutting edge of New York theater (and make a Hytner-sized name for himself), he might set out to prove that a repertory company really can work in 21stcentury New York. (I mean at a scale beyond the modest, admirable Pearl.)

It need not be a major gamble, a bet-the-farm operation. The Public has five stages: One of the smaller spaces could, for part or all of a season, be entrusted to a crack director and eight or 10 versatile, dedicated actors. Maybe they stage three shows, maybe just two, rotating or sequentially. Even this would be a major achievement. It would signal that Mr. Eustis is not just Joe Papp’s successor by virtue of inheriting his desk. Because this most radical idea also happens to be one of the first.

In 1958, with a debate raging about the feasibility of free Shakespeare, Walter Kerr offered Papp his column in the Sun day Herald-Tribune to make his case. “I am interested in a popular theater – not a theater for the few,” Papp wrote, in what biographer Helen Epstein called the most comprehensive public statement of his philosophy to that point. “I am interested in establishing a classical repertory company with a guaranteed annual wage for performers.”

It won’t work, people will say – it can’t. Such complaints seem like a fact of life atop the Public Theater. Joe Papp heard them all the time. Where would we be if he’d listened?