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Spalding Gray, 1942-2004
Spalding Gray may best be known for ruthlessly blurring the line between life and art. Since 1979, he has been writing and performing confessional autobiographical monologues that plumb lifes experiences for all their irony, absurdity, and edgy intensity.
New England native Spalding Gray was raised in Rhode Island and schooled in Massachusetts. As a writer and actor he humorously integrated his anxieties and experiences into stage performances. He was often seated at a desk with only a microphone, notebook, and a glass of water. Within this minimalist aesthetic, Gray's monologues were simultaneously funny, touching, and scary.
His wholly authentic style was influenced by Allen Ginsberg, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and the American autobiographical movement. After studying at Emerson College he mostly worked in experimental theater. In 1977, he co-founded the Wooster Theater Group in New York City. Two years later, he performed his first monologue, 'Sex and Death at the Age of 14'.
Gray traveled to Thailand to play a bit part in Roland Joff's war drama The Killing Fields, and that experience grew into Swimming to Cambodia, an Obie award-winning one-man stage performance and a 1987 feature film directed by Jonathan Demme. Gray also earned two Independent Spirit Award nominations for the film and finally found a lucrative way to merge his talents for both writing and acting.
After a brief appearance in David Byrne's True Stories, he showed up in various feature films over the next decade. Gray returned to theater in the late '80s to play the Stage Manager in a Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder's, 'Our Town'. He also started writing a novel, 'Impossible Vacation', an experience that grew into 'Monster in a Box', a one-man stage performance and feature film directed by Nick Broomfield.
During the '90s, Gray traveled to Malaysia to film John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon. He also showed up the independent films Drunks and Twenty Bucks. In 1993, he played a man who commits suicide in Steven Soderbergh's childhood drama King of the Hill. His memoir, 'Gray's Anatomy', was published by Random House a year later. That experience was made into a one-man stage performance and 1996 film directed by Soderbergh as the first original feature from the Independent Film Channel.
During this time, Gray settled into home life with his wife and three children, and his experience as a stay-at-home dad grew into the monologue, 'Morning, Noon and Night', which he performed at Lincoln Center in 1999. For his 60th birthday in 2001, he and his wife took a trip to Ireland that, unfortunately, ended with a car accident in which they were seriously injured.
As his depression worsened, Gray wrote the monologue, 'Black Spot' about the experience. Following several suicide attempts, Spalding Gray was reported missing January 11, 2004. His body was found in the East River near Brooklyn March 7, 2004.
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This is a myspace profile of a man I consider an American icon and personal hero. Thanks, Spald. Your passion and intriguing body of work has meant more to me and countless others than you will ever know...
Please take a moment to visit his various works and links provided.
