Centralight

ActorsStudio the Alumnus credits successful career to Moore Hall, CMU professors John Gray has been a doctor, a schizophrenia patient and battled on the front lines during his acting career, which has taken him to far-flung places across the globe. But no matter where he's acting, he says a part of him is back at CMU, listening to the instruction of Jill Taft-Kaufman and Steve Berglund, his former college instructors and directors. "They were so hands-on, teaching you things that went way past the basics," says Gray, '91, who lives in Chicago. "There are things they taught me that I still think about, to this day, when I'm on stage – how to really listen to the other actors on the stage, the importance of thinking beyond what's on the page." Gray moved to Chicago in 1993 and has been active in the theater scene there ever since. A member of Trap Door Theatre, he has traveled to Romania to perform and is planning another trip there this spring. Throughout his career, Gray has acted in commercials, performed on stage, done voice-over work, and appeared in films. You can catch his latest film, a psychological thriller called "Into the Wake," on Netflix. It all started on stage at Central, when he was cast as an attendant in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." His claim to fame: he had to hold main character McMurphy's feet down while he endured a shock treatment. He was hooked. "From then on, I never left Moore Hall," Gray says with a laugh. "I was always involved in theater." • From top: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," CMU, 1986, "Curse of the Starving Class" Chicago production BY TERRI FINCH HAMILTON centralight winter '12 19

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