Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T19:24:26.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - True stories: Spalding Gray and the authenticities of performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2009

Ivan Gaskell
Affiliation:
Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

In a world that really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false.

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

There is a moment in Spalding Gray's famous performance piece, Swimming to Cambodia, where the fabric of its authenticity – the warp and weft of its reality and truth – appears to unravel before our eyes. And then, Penelope-like, Gray re-weaves the whole. As performance, the piece insists upon its authenticity. It is a one-man monologue, narrated by Gray, who for its duration sits behind a table in front of the audience. (The movie version begins with him walking down a Soho street, entering a performance space, sitting down before an audience that has been waiting for him, and, after taking a long drink of water, beginning to talk – this, it is clear, is his job. This is what Spalding Gray really does.) In the performance, he refers occasionally to maps and charts, but otherwise, for about one and a half hours, he tells the story of his participation in the filming of Roland Joffe's quasi-documentary film The Killing Fields, itself the true story of New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian photographer, Dith Pran, with whom Schanberg had stayed in Phnom Penh after the American embassy had been evacuated in 1975 because he wanted to witness the occupation of the city by the Khmer Rouge.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×