Brendan Healy (my director for The Silicone Diaries) originally turned me onto Spalding Gray when we were working on an earlier version of The Silicone Diaries which premiered in Saint John, New Brunsiwck, in August, 2009. Brendan thought that my work bore a certain relation to Gray’s who also used autobiographical material in his performances. I was blown away when I checked out Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. I consider it a masterwork of solo performance. Rarely havve I seen someone who could excite me so much about storytelling. He used rhythm in thrilling ways. He was unapologetic about speaking his own truth even if he was confused or conflicted. I admired that he was transparent about his neuroses which inform Swimming to Cambodia but don’t become the main focus of the work. But, most of all, Spalding Gray could surf an unpredictable, sometimes violent, sea of emotion, sensory details, memory, intellectual analysis, surreal personal metaphors –his own ‘stream’ of consciousness. I was blown away.
“most of all, Spalding Gray could surf an unpredictable, sometimes violent, sea of emotion, sensory details, memory, intellectual analysis, surreal personal metaphors”
Thank you for the wonderful, kind words about Spalding. I will add you to the monologist page and I think your whole piece would be wonderful under Fan Writings. It sounds like you missed Shawn Watson doing his recent amazing performance of Swimming to Cambodia in Nova Scotia.
It’s posts like yours that make my years of work on the official site worthwhile.
Please note that in the last couple of days I have changed web hosts and in the transfer, many of my jpg files were corrupted/lost. So the site (www.spaldinggray..com) right now is a mess in terms of the sidebar. I am dancing as fast as I can to either restore the graphics, or better still I think I may convert the whole site finally to clean CSS coding. This all may take at least a week, but the end result will be very nice. Take a look at the transfer site http://www.spaldinggray.net to get an idea of how sharp the site will look like. I love your site. I was blown away.
jb
Webmaster for Spalding Gray, Estate of Spalding Gray
http://www.spaldinggray.com
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Have a nice day
Bodyc