Why Spalding Gray Matters”

 I am an actor/writer/director of solo performance. I live in Santa Fe, NM and have been writing and performing my own solo shows for many years. I also coach and direct others in their own creative process.

I was trained as a classical actor at Carnegie Mellon University, Emerson College and HB Studios in NY. My original dream was to be a stage actor acting in other playwrights works. However, that all changed one night in Boston when my acting teacher took me to see a one man show. It was at the Brattle Street Theater in Cambridge in 1984. The lights came up on a man sitting at a desk, wearing a flannel shirt. That night, I laughed and cried and was completely engaged with that man’s story. I sat there in the dark and thought to myself “I didn’t know theater could be like this…I didn’t know it could be so intimate…so real” This man was Spalding Gray who went on to become probably the most accomplished monologist of our time. His show that night was called “Travels through New England” and turned out to be one of the first of his amazing one man shows that allowed us, as an audience to get to share in his amazing “life-tales”

If you haven’t seen a Spalding Gray show, I suggest that you rent or buy one. “Swimming to Cambodia” was probably his most famous and is probably the easiest to fine. In it, he tells the back story of his journey to Cambodia when he was cast in a small part in “The Killing Fields”…he went on to do many other amazing shows that I was privileged to see including “It’s a Slippery Slope”, ‘Monster in a Box” and “Grays Anatomy”  (about a crazy eye disease he got and his insanely neurotic and hilarious quest to find a cure”) My very favorite show was called “Morning, Noon and Night” and I saw him perform it at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe a month before he was in a horrible automobile accident in Ireland that would ultimately lead him to take his own life a year or so later.

Spalding became famous for doing all his monologues sitting at a desk with a glass of water. He never really moved except when he walked in and sat down and walked off at the end of the show. But amazingly, in the middle of “Morning, Noon and Night” as he was recounting the joys of late in life fatherhood, he actually got up with a boom box on his shoulder, slid across the stage and danced! He danced as if he was dancing with his wife, Kathy and their kids, Theo, Forrest and Marissa. He danced, awkwardly and at the same time, unselfconsciously. Tears welled up in my eyes and I thought to myself “I’ll be damned; Spalding is happy”

The song he was dancing to was a hit, from the U.K called “Tub-thumping”….A few days ago, I was in the car thinking about Spalding and how different my life would be if I’d have never seen him perform….if I hadn’t devoted my life to the art of solo performance and monologues. (you’ll be reading all about this if you keep reading this blog!) Anyway, I was sitting in my car and asked Spalding if he had faith in me and if he could assist me from wherever he was right now in helping me spread the word about solo performance. What do you think happened next…yes! The radio….a minute later started blaring out the strains of the song “Tub-thumping” the song Spading had danced to. I hadn’t heard it in years~

e-mail: Tanya@ProjectLifeStories.org