SWIMMING TO AUSTIN

Maybe you started seeking remedies for

SPALDING GRAY 8pm Thursday, March 20 $19-32.50 Paramount Theater 713 Congress, Austin 888-597-7827 (Star Tickets)

the potential illness, and your path led you to a faith-healing cult in Tibet. While there, you met a woman whose illness was so unquestionably legitimate that it made you doubt not only your malady, but your entire approach to life.

If so, you're Spalding Gray's kind of person. Gray, the monologist featured in Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box, has a knack for holding an audience captive in the palm of his hand whether the story is a life-changing epic or a relentlessly self-absorbed crisis. Some years back, he took a breather from navel-gazing and decided to turn the tables on his audience, inviting strangers to the stage to show how fascinating another person can be when you have fallen into the habit of listening well.

We can't say for certain whether or not that's on the agenda for Gray's show at Austin's Paramount Theater on Thursday, March 20, but it is a safe bet that whatever is said up there will be worth driving to hear. •