Stories Left to Tell
When Spalding Gray succumbed to depression and took his life in the winter of 2004, he left behind a loving family, a legion of devoted fans and an enormous body of work.
Stories Left to Tell draws on Spalding’s life and unique work, featuring excerpts from his hilarious monologues along with journal entries, poems, and other unpublished—and previously unperformed—writing. The project, organized and directed by his widow, Kathleen Russo, and Lucy Sexton, is a daring tribute to the talented and always challenging Mr. Gray.
While Spalding himself became an indelible image—alone at a desk on a bare stage spinning his brilliant monologues—his performances were ultimately successful because the words resonated so deeply with the audience. Spalding’s stories summed up a lot of our own fears and neuroses and helped us understand them or at least bear them a little better by allowing us intermittently to laugh at them. Seeing Spalding’s words read by a stellar cast of his colleagues, friends, and admirers brings those stories to life in new and unexpected ways, pointing up the power of the writing and universal themes at the core of his work.