Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory Teaming on Two Plays

By LARRY ROHTER

Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, best known for their performances in the award-winning 1981 film “My Dinner with Andre,” are going to be working together again, this time on a pair of plays to be presented at the Public Theater next year in co-productions with the Theater for a New Audience.

Both plays are written by Mr. Shawn and will be directed by Mr. Gregory; they have also collaborated on adaptations of Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya” and Ibsen's “The Master Builder.” The first production will be a revival of Mr. Shawn's “The Designated Mourner,” which originally played in New York in 2000, and the second is the New York premiere of “Grasses of a Thousand Colors,” which Mr. Gregory directed when it had its debut at the Royal Court Theater in London in 2009.

“The Designated Mourner,” in which three intellectuals discuss their unnamed country's slide into political turmoil and repression, is schedu led to run June 21 to Aug. 25, 2013. The production will feature the cast from the original production and a subsequent radio play version, both of which Mr. Gregory directed: Mr. Shawn, Larry Pine and the writer Deborah Eisenberg, Mr. Shawn's longtime companion.

“Grasses of a Thousand Colors,” scheduled to run Oct. 8 to Nov. 10, 2013, focuses not on politics but on sexual expression and ecological disaster. Mr. Shawn will also act in that production, and will be reunited with the two other cast members who performed with him in London, Emily McDonnell and Jennifer Tilly.