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Spalding Gray, writer, actor and performer, created a series of 18 monologues, which have been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Australia, including Sex and Death to the Age 14; Booze, Cars and College Girls; A Personal History of the American Theater; India and After (America); Monster in a Box; Gray's Anatomy; It's a Slippery Slope; Morning, Noon and Night and the Obie Award-winning Swimming to Cambodia. From 1969 through 1985, Gray worked with the Performing Garage in New York, performing with the Performance Group directed by Richard Schechner and with the Wooster Group directed by Elizabeth LeCompte. From 1975 to 1978, Gray and LeCompte created his autobiographical trilogy, Three Places in Rhode Island. His early signature monologues were also developed at the Garage including Sex and Death to the Age 14, India and After (America), A Personal History of the American Theater, 47 Beds and Swimming to Cambodia, which was made into a film by Jonathan Demme. As an actor, Gray performed on Broadway playing Secretary William Russell in Gore Vidal's The Best Man and the stage manager in the revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, directed by Gregory Mosher. Other theater credits include the role of Hoss in the Performance Group's New York premiere of Sam Shepard's Tooth of Crime. Gray's film credits include James Mangold's Kate and Leopold; Jesse Dylan's How High?; Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields; Jonathan Demme's Swimming to Cambodia; Peter Cohn's Drunks; David Byrne's True Stories; Robert Mulligan's Clara's Heart; Gary Marshall's Beaches; Paul Mazursky's The Pickle; Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill; Ron Howard's The Paper; John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon and Jeremiah Chechik's Diabolique. Television appearances by Gray include the HBO special Terrors of Pleasure and HBO Premiere Film's The Image (with Albert Finney); and The Nanny and Zelda, directed by Pat O'Connor. Gray's publications include a collection of monologues including Sex and Death to the Age 14 (Random House); Swimming to Cambodia (Theatre Communications Group); In Search of the Monkey Girl (Aperture Press); Monster in a Box (Orchards, a showcase for talented young actors); Gray's Anatomy (Vintage) and the novel Impossible Vacation (Knopf). His novel It's a Slippery Slope was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the fall of 1997 and was released on compact disc by Mercury Records in the spring of 1998. Gray's monologue Gray's Anatomy was released as a film and directed by Steven Soderbergh in the spring of 1997. Gray's monologue Morning, Noon and Night was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and premiered at the Goodman Theatre in September 1999 and opened at Lincoln Center for a three-month run in the fall of 1999. Gray took his life in January 2004 after a two-year battle with depression caused by a head injury sustained in a car accident. His last monologue, Life Interrupted, was in development at Performance Space 122 in December 2003 and was published in 2005 by Crown Publishing. He is survived by his sons, Forrest and Theo, daughter, Marissa, and wife, Kathleen Russo.
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