Wallace Shawn's Grasses of a Thousand Colors Officially Opens at the Public

A scientist believes he has solved world hunger in Wallace Shawn's Grasses of a Thousand Colors, which officially opened October 28. The Public Theater and Theatre for a New Audience co-production will run through November 24, at the Public's Shiva Theater.

Directed by Andre Gregory, Grasses of a Thousand Colors features Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Emily Cass McDonnell, Kristina Mueller and Jennifer Tilly. Touching on almost every imaginable form of sexual expression while spinning a dystopian fantasy about ecological disaster, Grasses centers on Ben (Shawn), a doctor who figures out how to rejigger the metabolisms of animals to tolerate eating their own kind and ends up ruining the global ecosystem. The play also explores the riotous sexual imaginations of Ben, his wife and his lovers.

Grasses of a Thousand Colors was first presented by the English Stage Company at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2009, where it won enthusiastic critical praise. The play is presented as part of the The Wallace Shawn-André Gregory Project—a retrospective celebrating a 40-year collaboration—which also included The Designated Mourner.