Spalding Gray | Performance Space New York

Leftover Stories to Tell

Spalding Gray Tribute

When Spalding Gray succumbed to depression and took his life in the winter of 2004, he left behind a loving family, a legion of devoted fans and an enormous body of work. LEFTOVER STORIES TO TELL charts a uniquely personal journey through Spalding’s inimitable perspective and voice, featuring excerpts from his hilarious monologues juxtaposed with journal entries, poems, and other unpublished – and previously unperformed – writing.

LEFTOVER STORIES TO TELL also offers the chance to rediscover Spalding’s brilliance as a writer. The image of Spalding, alone on a bare stage spinning his brilliant monologues, became an indelible one through which his writing and performance were completely intertwined. Now, to experience his words read by a stellar cast of his colleagues, friends, and admirers brings his stories to life in new and unexpected ways, highlights his prodigious gifts as a writer, and underscores the transcendent power of the universal themes at the core of his work.

Created and co-directed by his widow Kathleen Russo and Lucy Sexton, this resonant program is exquisitely crafted from excerpts of both his classic work as well as previously unpublished writing and will be performed by renowned actors and authors at Performance Space 122 in New York from May 31-June 4.

Featuring:
James Urbaniak, Bob Holman, Ain Gordon, Jonathan Ames and Hazelle Goodman with guest performers :

Olympia Dukakis (Wednesday, May 31)
David Strathairn (Thursday, June 1)
Steve Buscemi and Aidan Quinn (Friday, June 2)
Fisher Stevens and Debra Winger (Saturday, June 3)
Joel Grey (Sunday, June 4)

Running Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes (no intermission). Guest performer schedule subject to change.

“On May 4th a preview excerpt of ‘Leftover Stories to Tell’ was performed as a tribute to Mr. Gray and to benefit Performance Space 122… The piece offered a poignant combination of hilarity and despair, finally leaving the audience on its feet in a rousing ovation. It was almost what Mr. Gray was always searching for: ‘a perfect moment.’ The only thing missing was Mr. Gray himself.”
-Click to read the full feature, “For Spalding Gray, One Last Tale” in The New York Times (pdf 3.1 MB).

May 31 – June 4, 2006
Wednesday – Sunday 8 p.m.
General Admission $50, $40 (Members)
Reserved Seating $75, 50 (Members)

Life Interrupted

As the first decade of the new century was getting underway, Spalding Gray worried that the joy he’d finally found with his wife, stepdaughter, and two sons would fail to fuel his work as a theatrical monologist the way anxiety, conflict, doubt, and various crises once had. Before he got the chance to find out, however, an automobile accident in Ireland left him with the lasting wounds of body and spirit that ultimately led him to take his own life.
As was always his method, Gray began to fashion a new monologue in various workshop settings that would tell the story of the accident and its aftermath. Originally titled Black Spot—for what the locals called the section of highway where Gray’s accident occurred—it began as a series of workshops at P.S. 122 in New York City and eventually became Life Interrupted.Gray died in early 2004, and though never completed, Life Interrupted is rich with brave self-revelation, masterfully acute observations of wonderfully peculiar people, penetrating wit and genuine humor, an irresolvable fascination with life and death, and all the other attributes of Gray’s singular and unmistakable voice.

Black Spot

Gray will debut his latest solo piece, Black Spot—about the accident in Ireland—at P.S. 122 this fall. The show is a work-in-progress and will run Mondays Oct. 7 through Dec. 30.

Gray was celebrating his 60th birthday when traveling in Ireland. According to press materials, the crash happened on the day after the longest day of the year. The monologue will also feature bits on Irish culture, socialized medicine, a further operation in the U.S. and Gray’s family’s move into a bigger house. Scheduled moving day: Sept. 11, 2001.