Spalding Gray's America traces Gray's life and work from his days with the Performance and Wooster Groups to his career as a storyteller who presented captivating monologues - including Swimming to Cambodia, Gray's Anatomy, and Monster in a Box - while sitting behind a desk on an otherwise bare stage. Gray's stories make up a quirky, full-color portrait of America. They are poignant, touching, and often troubling, but also vividly insightful and invariably funny. Spalding Gray's America captures the essence of Spalding Gray's theatre and storytelling, revealing the deep but conflicted passion behind his work.
Spalding Gray's America
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Review
This first book-length study of the life and work of celebrated monologist Spalding Gray (1941-2004) is wonderful. Covering Gray's life from his early beginnings to his untimely death, Demastes (Louisiana State Univ.) delves into the major works of this most self-reflexive of performers with a deft hand. Although this is not a biography per se, it offers significant information about Gray's life and its intersection with his art: close readings of Gray's performances allow one to see how in exposing his personal triumphs and tragedies Gray exposed and analyzed America and Americans. In sum, in dissecting Gray as observer of events, as artist, and as performer--a fascinating approach to the performer--Demastes makes sense of how Gray's monologues worked and what made him original. Including a wonderful personal reflection on Gray by Richard Schechner, this volume provides theater scholars and practitioners with an invaluable introduction to Gray and his work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --S. W. Cole, Bridgewater College
About the Author
William Demastes (Baton Rouge, LA) has written widely on theatre and drama, including the books Comedy Matters: From Shakespeare to Stoppard, Staging Consciousness; Theatre of Chaos; and Beyond Naturalism. He is a professor of English at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, and knew Spalding Gray for nearly fifteen years. Richard Shechner is editor of The Drama Review and a professor of Performance Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good look at Spalding's work,
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This review is from: Spalding Gray's America (Kindle Edition)
As long as the reader does not expect a strictly biographical account of Spalding (and we all know that fans are very keen on having one), this book is a very good exploration of different aspects of Spalding's work. If a reader is unfamilar with Spalding, this is an excellent companion to becoming introduced to Spalding's books and monologues.
Note that the official Spalding Gray web site has a complete pdf of Chapter 5 with the permission of the author. Hence, another way to get a sense of what this book is like. Thank you. web manager for the Estate of Spalding Gray [...]
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Spalding Gray's America, or Demastes' Spalding Gray?,
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This review is from: Spalding Gray's America (Paperback)
I didn't know what to expect ordering this book. It's about a 300 page book with an introduction by Richard Schechner, the intro. full of new information about the Theater group Spalding was apart of and his relationship with Schechner over the years. Rich in detail.
The first few chapters of the book, more information about Wooster and The Performance group. Demastes's following chapters on the books are tough to make it through, if you know the language of Spalding's books very well. Yes, we know about meeting Sam Shepard and Lou Reed and feeling unmanly in your sneakers ---I don't want to be quoted back Spalding, again and again. However, great pictures I've never seen. For me, the surveying style, however, is what kind of killed it for me. With the title, I was hoping for some information about his travelling live monologues....
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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straw boy, monkey girl Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Wooster Group, New York, The Person, The Killing Fields, Rumstick Road, Slippery Slope, Performance Group, Nayatt School, Rhode Island, United States, Sakonnet Point, Los Angeles, The Tooth of Crime, Grays Anatomy, Point Judith, New England, Sam Shepard, Indian Ocean, Richard Schechner, Paula Court, The Sea Gull, Christian Science, Libby Howes, Fichton Academy, Three Places Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
straw boy, monkey girl Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Wooster Group, New York, The Person, The Killing Fields, Rumstick Road, Slippery Slope, Performance Group, Nayatt School, Rhode Island, United States, Sakonnet Point, Los Angeles, The Tooth of Crime, Grays Anatomy, Point Judith, New England, Sam Shepard, Indian Ocean, Richard Schechner, Paula Court, The Sea Gull, Christian Science, Libby Howes, Fichton Academy, Three Places Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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