After a near-death experience, Spalding Gray says performing helps him heal
The phone rings at Spalding Gray's home in upstate New York. His partner, Kathie, answers, and you hear children playing in the background. She tells you Gray is outside with one of his two young sons: Could you call back to interview him a little later?
No problem.
Critics and fans of solo actor-writer Spalding Gray feel they know him intimately. And Kathie. And their three children. And why not?
In the series of 18 autobiographical monologues that have won him wide acclaim, Gray has spoken openly, comically and insightfully of his Rhode Island youth, his far-flung travels, his fears of mortality, his ailments and love affairs and struggles with writer's block, and (most recently) his reincarnation as a devoted family man.
Though he's performed often in Seattle, Gray is making his first appearances at Bumbershoot this weekend. But he won't be sitting, as per usual, at a small table, sipping water and spinning his eventful life into solo oratorical art.
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However, you can expect an update on the host's own life also — including a bulletin on his recent near-death experience.
"In June, we went to Ireland for my 60th birthday, and for some reason I was afraid to go," Gray explained by phone. "On our second night there, we were driving with friends on a country road when this rural veterinarian made a sudden turn and slammed right into the side of our car.
"There were animal tranquilizers all over the place! I was lying on the road in a pool of blood for an hour before an ambulance came. In a split second, my life changed. And since then, it's been a moment-to-moment struggle."
His partner, who was driving, was not badly injured. But Gray was. "I have a fractured hip socket, and they put a stainless-steel pin in my hip. And I fractured my skull. We didn't even know it at first, because it wasn't detected on the X-rays."
After his hip surgery, Gray underwent cranial surgery to reconstruct his sinuses. He's still on crutches, and coping with nerve damage in his foot. "It's kind of sad this summer because my son Theo is 4, and he says, `I wish you could hold me, Daddy,' and I can't pick him up and fling him around."
Given all that, it's a near-miracle Gray would interrupt his recuperation to fly cross-country, family in tow, for Bumbershoot. But he says performing is therapeutic — especially the give and take of "Interviewing the Audience."
"It's such a refresher," he said enthusiastically. "It gets me out of myself, and into other people's stories. I've done it many places — at an Art Against AIDS benefit in San Francisco, at Prospect Park in New York in front of 3,000 people. I try to come on as the Everyman, asking quotidian, everyday questions of people — like, how do you enjoy life?"
As for selecting his interviewees, Gray hangs out "in the lobby ahead of time, asking people questions. I'm looking for someone who can bounce the ball back and forth with me — it's about conversation, getting to know somebody publicly the way you do in a train or a bar.
"I find the best subjects are humble people, but intelligent and extroverted — not obviously narcissistic, or hidden performers. What I'm doing is undermining the celebrity talk show. I'm saying, `You all have a special story about your lives and deserve to be heard.' "
As for Gray's story, "I've got so many journals on the crash and its aftermath, and the need to talk about it is pretty ripe. Before the accident, I felt my last show, `Morning, Noon and Night' might be my final monologue. But this latest story isn't just about meeting death head-on, it's about Irish sensibilities vs. American ones, their hospitals vs. ours. It could become just a few words, or a complete narrative. I'm just not sure yet."
Misha Berson can be reached at mberson@seattletimes.com.