The director Sam Mendes will mount six classic plays at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during the next several years, beginning with “Hamlet” and “The Tempest” in early 2008, BAM announced yesterday.

In a collaboration, called the Bridge Project, between BAM and the Old Vic in London, Mr. Mendes will assemble a company of British and American actors in each of the three coming seasons for a classical double-bill. The productions will be presented at BAM and the Old Vic, as well as at another European theater. (In 2008, they will go to the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.)

Two British stars already have been chosen for the first two seasons: In 2008, the actor Stephen Dillane will play Hamlet and Prospero. In 2009, Simon Russell Beale will play Leontes in “The Winter’s Tale” and Lopakhin in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” The third season is still in discussion, leaving open the possibility that the Old Vic’s artistic director since 2004, the Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey, will appear in one or both of those productions. Mr. Spacey, who is in town to star in the Broadway transfer of the Old Vic’s production of “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” which began previews last night, said: “It seemed to all of us that we should do something together that was more than a one-off play. Yes, it’s ambitious, and it fits right into the ethos that I’ve been trying to build at the Old Vic, which is that cultural bridge between the United States and London.”

The project will cost about $2 million a year. Both BAM and the Old Vic are looking for corporations and individuals to sponsor it, Mr. Spacey and BAM’s executive producer, Joseph Melillo, said.