Wooster Group's Seance-Style Tribute to Spalding Gray Comes to London
In a remarkable fusion of memory and performance, New York's venerable avant-garde theatre company, the Wooster Group, is bringing a head-spinning tribute to London. Nayatt School Redux, opening at the Coronet theatre this April, represents not just a revival but a profound reimagining of Spalding Gray's 1978 work, blending elements of seance, ventriloquism, and the company's signature high-low art collisions.
The Transformative Power of Gray's Audience Interviews
The production finds its roots in Spalding Gray's legendary Interviewing the Audience performances, where the celebrated monologist would invite strangers from the lobby to share their lives on stage. Scott Shepherd, now a Wooster Group stalwart, recalls his first encounter with this transformative work at New York's Performing Garage. "His first question was always the same – 'How did you get to the theatre?' – and somehow, he would find a thread from that into the person's inner being," Shepherd reflects, describing it as one of the great early theatre experiences of his life.
Similarly, Kate Valk experienced her own epiphany at the same intimate venue, where some seats required climbing a ladder to access. After seeing Gray in Sakonnet Point and Rumstick Road, she abandoned her apartment to move in upstairs, joining what she describes as "such an amazing group of artists." Valk has remained with the company ever since, rarely working outside it: "I don't know how to do anything else."
Channeling Gray Through Deteriorated Archives
Now, both actors return to Gray's role in what director Elizabeth LeCompte describes as an act of theatrical archaeology. With only "very deteriorated, black-and-white material" remaining from the original 1978 production, the company has created what Valk calls "a palimpsest across the top of Spalding." The performer, who lived with Gray in the 1970s, explains their approach: "We're getting as close to channelling his performance in Nayatt School as we can."
Shepherd, who previously mimicked Richard Burton's Hamlet in a 2005 Wooster Group production, describes the process as "another act of channelling or ventriloquism," made more literal by wearing some of Gray's original costumes. "It does feel a bit seancey," he admits, capturing the production's spiritual dimension.
The Wooster Group's Signature High-Low Cocktail
The original Nayatt School, named for the Barrington, Rhode Island school Gray attended, showcased LeCompte's collage-like aesthetic, blending vaudeville radio skits with T.S. Eliot's postwar play The Cocktail Party. This fusion of disparate elements has become the company's trademark, with subsequent productions marrying baroque opera with sci-fi B-movies, Noh theatre with Chekhov, and Gertrude Stein with sexploitation films.
"It's a fun mix, like a cocktail," says Valk of these juxtapositions. "Sometimes, it's not logical or reasonable, but you put the source material and the text so they're vibrating against each other and then they somehow grow together." Shepherd adds that this approach has a "double benefit": it demystifies high art while revealing sublime qualities in popular culture.
Precision Performance and Athletic Spirit
Despite the bewildering combinations, Wooster Group performances are renowned for their technical precision. Valk describes the company's "middle period" performers, including herself, Shepherd, and Ari Fliakos, as possessing "an athlete spirit" with the "speed, deftness and technical skills" required for their complex productions. This discipline extends to matching live performance with recorded film and audio, creating layered experiences that challenge audiences while maintaining rigorous craftsmanship.
LeCompte's Joyful Approach to Artistic Collision
At 82, Elizabeth LeCompte retains what colleagues describe as a sense of "delight and mischief" in her creative process. She compares her technique to frottage – the artistic practice of creating pencil rubbings from rough surfaces – explaining, "The performers are material and I like to rub myself up against them." Her approach stems from a childhood watching television, where serious drama could abruptly cut to toothpaste commercials without logical connection.
This production represents both a tribute to a departed friend and colleague, and a continuation of the Wooster Group's five-decade exploration of how disparate cultural elements can vibrate against each other to create new meaning. As London audiences prepare to experience this unique theatrical seance, they'll encounter not just a revival of Gray's work, but a living conversation between past and present, high art and popular culture, memory and performance.
Nayatt School Redux runs at the Coronet theatre, London, from 17th to 25th April.
