Spalding Gray - Career

Career

He began his theater career in New York in late 1960s. In 1970, he joined Richard Schechner's experimental troupe, The Performance Group. With actors from The Performance Group, including Willem Dafoe and Elizabeth LeCompte, Gray helped to co-found the influential theater company the Wooster Group from 1975 to 1980 before leaving the company to focus on his own monologue work.

Theatre historian Don Wilmeth noted Gray's contribution to a unique style of writing and acting: "The 1980s saw the rise of the autobiographical monologue, its leading practitioner Spalding Gray, the WASP from Rhode Island who portrays himself as an innocent abroad in a crazy contemporary world. . . others, like Mike Feder, who grew up in Queens and began telling his life on New York radio, pride themselves on their theatrical minimalism, and simply sit and talk. Audiences come to autobiography for direct connection and great stories, both sometimes hard to find in today's theatre."

After starring in some supporting actor movie roles, such as in The Killing Fields, and television parts, including Saturday Night Live, Gray first achieved national prominence with his play Swimming to Cambodia, which he wrote in 1985 and was adapted into a film in 1987. It was a monologue based entirely on his experiences in Southeast Asia where he played a small role in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. For his monologue, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Award in 1985.