Mel Shapiro, an award-winning theater director whose collaborations with the playwright John Guare included their critically acclaimed musical version of Shakespeare’s comedy “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and the Off Broadway premiere of “The House of Blue Leaves,” died on Dec. 23 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.

His son Josh said the cause was lung cancer.

In a career that began in the 1960s, Mr. Shapiro directed plays and musicals in New York City and around the country, worked at elite regional theaters, and taught acting and directing at major universities.

In 1969, when Mr. Guare was seeking a director for “Blue Leaves,” he spoke to John Lahr, a former literary manager at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and later a theater critic for The New Yorker. He recommended Mr. Shapiro, who had been a producing director at the Guthrie.

Mr. Lahr, Mr. Guare recalled in an interview, said, “The two of you were made to work together.” They met when Mr. Shapiro directed Vaclav Havel’s play “The Increased Difficulty of Conversation” at Lincoln Center. “I loved the play, met Mel and loved Mel,” Mr. Guare said.

“The House of Blue Leaves” — a dark comedy about a zookeeper, living with his mentally ill wife in Queens, who aspires to a songwriting career in Hollywood — opened in early 1971 at the Truck and Warehouse Theater in the East Village.

Reviewing it in The New York Times, Clive Barnes called the play “mad, funny, at times very funny,” and praised Mr. Shapiro’s “fliply crisp staging.” It won the Obie and Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for best American play.