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Spalding Gray's Stories Left To Tell
By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 6, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Mar 6, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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Three years after his death, Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell has opened at Minetta Lane Theater. Running through May 13th, the performance features five actors surrounded by stacks of marble notebooks, similar to those Gray filled in his lifetime (up to 300). Selections from "Swimming to Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and other monologues are read, but perhaps more insightful and often eerie are his unpublished works. From his last entry (a tape recording from December 18th, 2003): "Everything's in my head now, my timing is all off. Tomorrow is the day I'm going to kill myself."
The NY Post has an article revisiting Gray's life and death. His widow, Kathleen Russo, has compiled the pieces for the production, and tells the Post some anecdotes of her time with Gray:
"While they were dating, Gray married his longtime companion and director, Renée Shafransky. When Russo told him she was pregnant, she says, "he freaked and had a minor breakdown."
She was sharing a loft with the Blue Man Group at the time, she says, and they offered to help her raise the baby. But Gray's wife left him soon after, and it was then that he first met their infant son, Forrest - a story recounted, naturally enough, in a monologue."
Tickets for Stories Left To Tell can be puchased here.
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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