Reading week 3

Reading – Week 3

Bonney, J. (2000). Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

SPALDING GRAY

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Spalding Gray works in a unique style. He writes his thoughts, feelings, memories, imaginings, regrets, memoirs and experiences in a notebook. He then goes onto the stage, sits at a plain table and regurgitates these notes to the audience, sometimes expanding on them as he goes along. There is no traditional performative element in Gray’s work, though he is on the stage he does not act, he uses his voice and what he is saying to do the work of the actor. The work is very personal and revealing, but this is what makes it so captivating. Gray’s Commune is about his diaries and memories of a performance he was taking part in. He is brutally honest with his words, not in an insulting or shocking way, but he simply tells it as it is, or was. He freely admits to his concern at taking LSD, and he tells the audience of the effects. This, for many in the audience, will be the only experience they have with drugs, or towards the insight of the rehearsal process of a play. Gray seems not to insult anybody in the piece, but he doesn’t sugar any pills. He discusses his scepticism around religion and the differences between them. Gray is cleverly wording his piece in order not to insult or provoke, yet the delivery seems unforced and un-doctored. It is a highly personal insight to a part of his life that he would otherwise not have shared. It is worded in a way that the audience can easily picture what he is saying, therefore reducing the need for an elaborate set, props or costume. This is not a conventional play in any sense, but it works as a performance because he is opening up to an audience and therefore leaving himself vulnerable to them. Gray’s work seems like it is simply an autobiography, but with a book the author is hidden and protected by the pages, yet the performer here is not playing a character as a traditional actor would, but all the characters, and even more importantly, himself. What I find the most effective is how Gray is trusting his work, because he is in a position on stage where he is vulnerable because he is not hiding behind a character.