This Is Not My Memoir

André Gregory

André Gregory has been directing theater in New York for more than half a century. His forty-year collaboration with Wallace Shawn began with his critically acclaimed production of Shawn’s Our Late Night, and he has collaborated on film versions of his theater productions with Shawn, Louis Malle, and Jonathan Demme. Gregory, Shawn, and Malle created the now-legendary My Dinner with André. As an actor, Gregory has performed in a dozen films, including The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese, and Mosquito Coast by Peter Weir. Gregory is also a writer, a teacher, and a painter–an exhibition of his artwork was staged at Monica King Contemporary in New York City this fall.

Wallace Shawn

Wallace Shawn started writing plays in 1967. His first play to be professionally produced, Our Late Night, was written for André Gregory’s company the Manhattan Project. It was directed by Gregory and opened at the Public Theater in 1975. Mr. Shawn’s other plays–which include The Fever, The Designated Mourner, and Grasses of a Thousand Colors, among others–have been performed in New York and London. Also with André Gregory, Shawn co-wrote and co-starred in the classic film My Dinner with André, and Mr. Shawn’s work as a film actor includes appearances in Manhattan, Radio Days, Clueless, and the Toy Story series. Mr. Shawn’s most recent book, Night Thoughts, was just released in paperback.

Photo: André Gregory © Cindy Kleine