Leftover Stories to Tell: A Tribute to Spalding Gray

Created and co-directed by his widow Kathleen Russo and Lucy Sexton, this resonant program is exquisitely crafted from excerpts of both his classic work as well as previously unpublished writing and will be performed by renowned actors and authors, many of them close friends of Gray’s. The nightly core cast is James Urbaniak, Bob Holman, Ain Gordon, Jonathan Ames and Hazelle Goodman with celebrity guest performers Olympia Dukakis (Wednesday, May 31), David Strathairn (Thursday, June 1), Steve Buscemi & Aidan Quinn (Friday, June 2), Fisher Stevens & Debra Winger (Saturday, June 3) and Joel Grey (Sunday, June 4).

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. Leftover Stories to Tell charts a uniquely personal journey through Spalding’s inimitable perspective and voice, featuring excerpts from his hilarious monologues juxtaposed with journal entries, poems, and other unpublished — and previously unperformed — writing. Leftover Stories to Tell also offers the chance to rediscover Spalding’s brilliance as a writer. The image of Spalding, alone on a bare stage spinning his brilliant monologues, became an indelible one through which his writing and performance were completely intertwined. Now, to experience his words read by a stellar cast of his colleagues, friends, and admirers brings his stories to life in new and unexpected ways, highlights his prodigious gifts as a writer, and underscores the transcendent power of the universal themes at the core of his work.