Public Theater's GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS Concludes Run Tonight

The Public Theater's GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS, part of The Wallace Shawn-André Gregory Project, written by Wallace Shawn, conludes its run tonight, December 1. Directed by André Gregory, GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS opened on Monday, October 28.

The complete cast of GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS features Julie Hagerty (Cerise); Emily Cass McDonnell (Rose, Robin alternate); Kristina Mueller (Rose alternate); Wallace Shawn (Ben); and Jennifer Tilly (Robin).

A co-production with Theatre for a New Audience, The Wallace Shawn-André Gregory Project is a celebration of a remarkable theatrical collaboration. Wallace Shawn is one of America's most significant playwrights, long overdue for a major retrospective. André Gregory, his My Dinner with André co-star, has been directing Shawn's plays for 40 years, and as part of this retrospective, he directs Shawn's two most recent plays, the American premiere of the profoundly provocative Grasses of a Thousand Colors, and the first New York revival of the acclaimed masterwork, The Designated Mourner, which was staged this past June at The Public. Shawn is a multifaceted figure: an internationally famous character actor as well as an incomparably courageous playwright whom critics have placed in the first rank of contemporary dramatists. Gregory is the acclaimed director who has brought his most challenging works to fruition, including Our Late Night, Shawn's first play in New York City which was presented at The Public Theater in 1975.

Shawn's most outlandish work to date, GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS, is a disturbing and anomalously beautiful play that explores the role of human beings in nature and the role of nature in human beings, sexuality being as Shawn says, "nature's most obvious footprint in the human soul." The play's central character is a doctor who believes he has solved world hunger when he figures out how to rejigger the metabolisms of animals to tolerate eating their own kind. This has unexpected consequences. The play tells a story about the doctor, his wife, and his lovers, that is also a story about human beings and animals and the planet we live on.

Wallace Shawn's plays include The Designated Mourner; Grasses of a Thousand Colors; The Fever; Aunt Dan & Lemonand Marie and Bruce. With André Gregory, he wrote the film My Dinner With André, and with Tom Cairns he wrote the film Marie and Bruce. Scott Elliott directed Aunt Dan & Lemon and direcTed Shawn as an actor in Hurlyburly. Shawn was the editor of "Final Edition," which contained work by Deborah Eisenberg, Mark Strand and Jonathan Schell, and Shawn's interview with Noam Chomsky.