The Irish Times - Saturday, January 24, 2004
Master of monologue missing in action
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Well-known actor and performer Spalding Gray has disappeared from his New York home, and his family is very concerned, writes Ian Kilroy 
Spalding Gray, the renowned American performer and actor, has been officially missing since last Monday. Prone to depression since a serious car accident in Ireland in June 2001, he has a history of attempting suicide.
Gray's family last saw him on January 10th, when he left his New York apartment, telling his wife he was going to visit friends. He left without his wallet, never turned up at his friend's house, and failed to board a flight the next morning at La Guardia airport for a holiday in Colorado. New York detectives have received reports that he was spotted on the Staten Island ferry on the night he went missing. There are fears he may have gone overboard.
Gray (62) is best known for his series of 18 autobiographical monologues, the most famous of which are Swimming to Cambodia, for which he won an Obie, and Gray's Anatomy. The Rhode Island-born actor-writer had just completed a new stage work, Life Interrupted, which had been running off-Broadway in recent months. An earlier version of the work, Black Spot, was abandoned in 2002 when Gray again attempted suicide.
Both earlier and later versions of the work deal with the trauma of his car accident in Ireland, which had physically and psychologically scarred him. By all accounts, Gray was deeply embittered by the treatment he received in Ireland after the crash. After his hired car was struck by a van, he claims he had to wait an hour before an ambulance arrived.
In Life Interrupted, he is scathing about the hospital conditions in Ireland and expresses his belief that his treatment was below acceptable standards. Since the accident, he has walked with a limp and has been periodically depressed, saying he feels "maimed". In the wake of the crash, friends say Gray grew despondent. "I have lost my sense of humour since the accident," Gray told the Salt Lake Tribune in March last year. "I get up to walk, and I limp and I remember the accident," he said.
Trish Forde, director of the Galway Arts Festival from 1990 to 1995, knows Spalding Gray from his appearances at the festival - particularly in 1995, when Gray officially opened the event. She says she can understand the effect the accident must have had on him.
"I can imagine that if he had a crash and he wasn't treated the American way, well, that would have freaked him, he was so sensitive," she says.
According to Forde, Gray loved performing in Ireland, saying, "he was happy and comfortable here". The fact that he kept returning would suggest as much - he has performed in Dublin on a number of occasions, as well as in Galway.
Forde describes Gray as "a lovely, lovely man - quite eccentric, and with a very black sense of humour". She knew him as "a quiet kind of man, never the life and soul of the party, quiet and pensive . . . and he always talked about coming back to see more of the country".
Paul Fahy, of the Galway Arts Festival, chaperoned Gray on one of his visits here, and describes the American performer as "really sharp, very funny, brilliant and super-intelligent".
A co-founder of The Wooster Group, a famous New York avant-garde theatre company, Gray has been focusing on confessional solo performances since the late 1970s. Making the monologue form his own, he has melded art with life, to great critical acclaim. His quintessential performance involves a solitary Gray sitting with a microphone and a glass of water behind a desk, weaving language and narrative around a theme with digressions.
Once described as a "modern-day Mark Twain", Gray's work has touched on everything from his own mother's suicide, to his appearance in the movie The Killing Fields (1984), to his troublesome eye condition and his failed attempts to finish a novel. Some of his highly hilarious and darkly humorous work has also made the transition to film - most notably Swimming to Cambodia (1987).
As an actor, Gray appeared in films such as Beaches (1988), Kate and Leopold (2001) and King of the Hill (1993). His most recent Broadway appearance was in Gore Vidal's The Best Man, in 2000.
While friends and family continue to hope that he will turn up alive, for now New York police continue their search for Spalding Gray.
© 2004 The Irish Times