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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > November > 08 > Entry
UT’s Ransom Center acquires Spalding Gray archive
The University of Texas’ Ransom Center has acquired the archive of writer, monologuist and actor Spalding Gray, the center announced Monday.
Gray is perhaps best known for his monologue “Swimming to Cambodia,” based on his experiences in Southeast Asia while acting in a small part in the 1984 movie “The Killing Fields.” Gray’s quirky story, which he read from a spiral notebook while seated at a simple table on stage, became a critically-acclaimed movie in 1987 and ushered in the popularity of a style of autobiographical storytelling where the line between private life and public performance display is not just erased, but celebrated.
The archive, valued at $595,000, is partially a donation by Gray’s widow, Kathleen Russo, and partially a purchase by the Ransom Center, which paid $250,000. The gift portion of the collection is valued at $345,000.
Included in the material now at the Ransom Center are more than 100 of Gray’s private journals as well as more 90 performance notebooks Gray used as road maps for his live performances.
Like his monologues, which always skidded between philosophical musings and entertaining absurdities, his notebook writings seem to have no apparent self-censorship. “Get it together Spalding,” Gray writes in red capital letters in one performance notebook for “Swimming to Cambodia.” “I cannot get in an honest place unless I am alone” he writes in 1990 notebook.
“He writes about sex, death, drugs and love with honesty and humor,” said Helen Adair, associate curator of performing arts at the Ransom Center. “His voice is clear, and he appears to have no filter. Everything is written down without shame. Like his performances, it is powerful because it is so personal.”
Gray, who had suffered from depression throughout his life, died in 2004 at age 62 of an apparent suicide after his body was discovered in New York’s East River nearly two months after he disappeared. A car crash in 2001 in Ireland left him with a brain injury that exacerbated Gray’s depression — circumstances that he inevitably dealt with publicly.
Also include in the archive are more than 150 audio cassette tapes and 120 VHS tapes of Gray’s performances, interviews and appearances. In one audio tape from a 2001 performance of “Swimming to Cambodia,” Gray opens his performance with a recount of his car accident in his quirky, free-associative style: “And I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I had died in the Civil War. I was on the battlefield, wounded actually, at Antietam, and all these other people around me groaning were corpses. You could hear the magpies outside, squawking, and oh my God, in the morning, in came people with toast and tea.”
Born in Rhode Island to what he always characterized as staunch Christian Science family, Gray settled in New York in the 1960s where he became a co-founder the noted avant-garde theater troupe, the Wooster Group and where he first began to perform his monologues. Although his work garnered attention within the theater community, it was the Jonathan Demme-directed film of “Swimming to Cambodia” that brought Gray — and his more widespread recognition.
Steven Soderbergh’s biopic about Gray “And Everything Is Going Fine” screened at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival.
Image: Cover of Spalding Gray’s performance notebook for “Swimming to Cambodia”. Gray is seen using this notebook in the 1987 film by Jonathan Demme. Courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center.
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By Wolfgang
November 8, 2010 4:27 PM | Link to this
Excellent news. Gray’s archive has an appropriate home in the HRC in Austin.