The Public Theater and Theatre for a New Audience will present three special screenings of Wallace Shawn and André Gregory's most beloved films, André Gregory: Before and After Dinner, Vanya on 42nd Street, and My Dinner With André, at Joe's Pub at The Public in August. These three screenings are presented as part of the current retrospective, The Wallace Shawn-André Gregory Project, celebrating the 40-year collaboration between these two artists.
Single tickets, priced at $10, are on sale now and can be purchased by calling (212) 967-7555,
www.joespub.com, or in person at
The Public Theater at Astor Place at 425 Lafayette Street.
On Saturday, August 3 at 7:00 p.m. the first film in the retrospective, André Gregory: Before and After Dinner, will be screened in Joe's Pub at The Public. The film is an exploration of the life and work of groundbreaking director, actor and artist André Gregory, directed by award-winning filmmaker Cindy Kleine (who is also his wife). A witty and often hilariously funny raconteur, Gregory looks back on a career that spanned decades, shattered boundaries and established him as a cultural icon. Bringing us back and forth in time, Gregory looks not only at his life, but at the nature of art, love and the creative process.
The second film, Vanya on 42nd Street, will be presented on Sunday, August 4 at 4:00 p.m. Over the course of three years, director André Gregory and a group of actors came together on a voluntary basis in order to better understand Chekhov's work through performance workshops. Staged and filmed entirely within the vacant shell of the then-abandoned New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street, once the home of the Ziegfeld Follies, they enacted the play rehearsal style on a bare stage with the actors in street clothes. The first 45 minutes seem to be a documentary of a rehearsal, and without the audience noticing, it transforms into a filmed version of the play.
On Sunday, August 4 at 7:00 p.m. the final film, My Dinner with André, will be presented. An extended conversation between two old friends over dinner: André Gregory, a renowned experimental theater director, and playwright and actor
Wallace Shawn, both of whom play versions of themselves. Gregory is an inquisitive, uninhibited wanderer, willing to travel to remote lands to take part in unusual foreign rituals, while Shawn is the cynical, realistic New Yorker, more concerned with the challenges and rewards of day-to-day city life.
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 first New York revival of the acclaimed masterwork The Designated Mourner and the American premiere of the profoundly provocative Grasses of a Thousand Colors. 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.
In this two-part event, the acclaimed masterwork, THE DESIGNATED MOURNER, is running now through Sunday, August 25 at The Public's Shiva Theater for its first New York revival. The cast includes Shawn as well as
Deborah Eisenberg and
Larry Pine - original company members from the 2000 New York production.
GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS, which had its world premiere at
The Royal Court Theatre in 2009, will have its American Premiere at The Public's Shiva Theater this fall with Shawn,
Emily Cass McDonnell and
Jennifer Tilly repeating their roles in this acclaimed production. GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLORS will runTuesday, October 8 through Sunday, November 10.
Wallace Shawn's plays include The Designated Mourner; Grasses of a Thousand Colors; The Fever; Aunt Dan & Lemon and 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 direc
Ted 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.
ANDRÉ GREGORY, as a theatre director, has been one of the most important forces in the American theatre for nearly 40 years. Gregory was one of the original creators of the regional theatre movement in this country as well as the off-Broadway movement in New York. His production of Alice in Wonderland, now legendary, played in New York for seven years, as well as touring the U.S., Europe, and the Mideast. It was made into a book in collaboration with
Richard Avedon. His relationship with
Wallace Shawn, which has been ongoing for over thirty years, began with his production of Shawn's Our Late Night, which was critically acclaimed and was presented at
Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. Shawn and Gregory went on to create My Dinner With André, which has now become an American classic. It was one of the two to three films to launch the American independent film movement. It is studied in many film courses with other American classics, such as Citizen Kane andCasablanca. It was directed by
Louis Malle. The partnership of Shawn, Malle and Gregory went on to create the film Vanya on 42nd Street, which like My Dinner With André, was hugely successful and has been shown all over the world. In 2000, Gregory directed
Wallace Shawn's play, The Designated Mourner, to universally successful reviews. As an actor, Gregory has performed in a dozen Hollywood films, including films directed by
Martin Scorsese, Peter Weir and
Woody Allen.
Martin Scorsese directed Gregory in the role of John the Baptist in The Last Temptation of Christ and Peter Weir directed him in The Mosquito Coast. Gregory's most recent production of Endgame - over the years, he's done three - was performed in an unfinished Donald Judd building in the middle of the Marfa Texas desert in 2005. In 2009, Gregory directed a new play, Grasses of a Thousand Colors, by
Wallace Shawn at
The Royal Court Theatre in London. It received rave reviews, both there and in the U.S. This past Spring
Jonathan Demme made a film of Gregory's production of Ibsen's Master Builder which
Wallace Shawn adapted.
The Public Theater (
Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director;
Patrick Willingham, Executive Director) was founded by
Joseph Papp in 1954 and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, and productions of classics at its downtown home and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
The Public Theater's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day onstage and through extensive outreach programs. Each year, more than 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park.
The Public Theater's productions have won 42 Tony Awards, 161 Obies, 48 Drama Desk Awards and four Pulitzer Prizes. Fifty-four Public
Theater Productions have moved to Broadway, including Sticks and Bones; That Championship Season; A Chorus Line; For Colored Girls...; The Pirates of Penzance; The Tempest; Bring In 'da Noise, Bring In 'da Funk; The Ride Down Mt. Morgan; Topdog/Underdog; Take Me Out; Caroline, or Change; Passing Strange; the revival of HAIR; Bloody Bloody
Andrew Jackson and The Merchant of Venice.
www.publictheater.org.
THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE, (
Jeffrey Horowitz, Artistic Director;
Dorothy Ryan, Managing Director) founded in 1979 by Mr. Horowitz, is a modern classical theatre whose cornerstone is Shakespeare. The Theatre is dedicated to the language and ideas of authors and produces Shakespeare alongside other classic and contemporary plays. It has played Off and on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally. In 2000, the Theatre's production of The Green Bird directed by
Julie Taymor transferred to Broadway. In 2001 Theatre for a New Audience became the first American theatre invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the
Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Stratford-upon-Avon. Cymbeline, directed by
Bartlett Sher, premiered at the RSC; in 2007, Theatre for a New Audience was invited to return to the RSC with The Merchant of Venice starring
F. Murray Abraham and directed by
Darko Tresnjak. In 2011, Mr. Abraham reprised his role as Shylock for a national tour. The Theatre's productions have been honored with over 80-Tony, OBIE, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Lortel and Audelco awards and nominations. Last season, the Theatre played to 49,000 people, an audience diverse in age, economics and cultural background. The Theatre created and runs the largest program in the New York City Public Schools to introduce Shakespeare, and has served more than 123,000 students since the program began in 1984. In June, 2011, Theater for a New Audience celebrated the groundbreaking for its first home, a center for Shakespeare and classic drama adjacent to BAM in the new Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District. The new Theatre will open in fall 2013.
