André Gregory
André Gregory is one of America's most significant theatre directors, even if most know his story and work through film. Born in 1934 in New York, André's father was a Russian fur trader who went into real estate in New York and Beverly Hills. As a child, Gregory knew many Hollywood stars as fellow horseback riders along the then-rural world of Sunset Boulevard. At Harvard, Gregory began to gravitate to creating his own style of theatre. In New York, his productions of Genet, Beckett, and Brecht helped launch the Off and Off-Off Broadway theatre movement. His work was as radical as it was a reflection of the times. He was once fired from running a theatre for putting the odor of vomit into the air ducts to give the audience a genuine environmental sense of the play's world. With a group of students from New York University, Gregory created a company, Manhattan Project, and a production: Alice in Wonderland was known as much for the physical dexterity of the actors as it was for a new kind of theatrical imagination. The production toured throughout the world. An early production of Wallace Shawn's Our Late Night led to a lifetime of collaboration. Their screenplay and acting in the Louis Malle-directed film, My Dinner with Andre, brought the world of experimental theatre, US politics, and one's man search for meaning to millions. Gregory, Shawn and Malle also created the film of Gregory's production, Vanya on 42nd Street. In the nineties, Gregory and Shawn toured their stage production of The Designated Mourner. Gregory's acting can also be seen in the Martin Scorcese film The Last Temptation of Christ as John the Baptist, as well as the films Bonfire of the Vanities, Demolition Man, The Shadow, The Mosquito Coast, and Always. In 1982, Gregory began writing his first play, Bone Songs. The first production, co-directed by Gregory and Twyla Tharp, took place in 1983. As a perfect reflection of Gregory's commitment to long term work, the play continued to be revised, reworked, and restaged for the next twenty-five years. Bone Songs was finally published in 2006.
