Only by Failure: The Many Faces of the Impossible Life of Terence Gray(Salt Modern Lives Series)

Only by creativity and the risk of failure can one succeed. This book is the first attempt to trace the life of Terence Gray, a man who always wanted to hide behind masks and pseudonyms, whose death, in 1987 at the age of 93, was (therefore) not noted despite a life of great variety and achievement. He is only known today by brief references in theatre books and under his pseudonym of Wei Wu Wei. The son of Irish aristocrats, Gray was born in Suffolk and came to Wandlebury near Cambridge before leaving for short spells at Eton and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a Red Cross ambulance-driver in France and Italy and an air-mechanic for the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. He became an Egyptologist, historian and author of plays during the Twenties before opening the Festival Theatre in Cambridge in 1926 with a sensational production of the Oresteia in Egyptian-style on a redesigned open stage and with the new electric lighting from Germany and with choreography by Ninette de Valois. The Royal Ballet of today has its roots in performances of the de Valois school and her arrangement of movement for plays at the Festival Theatre. Over seven years Gray achieved an international reputation, until eventually his little empire crumbled, culminating with the conflict between his own views and those of the student critics of the Cambridge Review. At just thirty-eight his creative life seemed to come to an end and, humiliated by a satirical revue put on by the Cambridge Footlights, he departed for the South of France to run the family vineyard and the racehorses which were kept in England and Ireland. His horse Zarathrustra won the Ascot Gold Cup in 1956 and the following year he married a Russian princess from Georgia. His new life really began in 1958 when he looked up at the stars and decided to become a mystic. Under the name of Wei Wu Wei, Gray published the first of eight books in his own personal style of Zen Buddhism.

Table of Contents:
List of Works Published by Terence Gray List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface Chronology Mask One: The Growing Child Beginning a New Life in England Mask Two: The Student Like Father, Like Son, at Magdalene College, Cambridge Mask Three: Red Cross and Royal Flying Corps War Service in France, Italy and Egypt Mask Four: Writer and Budding Egyptologist Nine Years: From War to Theatre Mask Five: Irish Son and Son of the Theatre A Return to Irish Roots and into the Art of the Theatre Mask Six: Theatre manager, director and host. The Opening of the Cambridge Festival Theatre Mask Seven: Theatre Supremo Seven Years at the Festival Theatre Mask Eight: The Retired Irishman in his Vineyard Gray's Search for Peace of Mind in France is Disturbed by War Mask Nine: The Married Mystic Gray Transforms Himself into Wei Wu Wei Mask Ten: The Retired Sage in a life of inaction A Quiet Death in Monte Carlo A Mask for the Future: Gray the Educator The Art of the Theatre and Educational Drama Appendix One Post-1933 comments on Terence Gray and the Festival Theatre Appendix Two Those involved in the creativity of the seven years of the Festival Theatre 1926 to 1933 Appendix Three The Impact of the Festival Theatre on Theatre, Ballet and Cinema. Appendix Four Productions by Terence Gray/Quetzalcoatl Appendix Five The Actors of the Festival Theatre Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Paul Cornwell taught in primary education for almost forty years. His book Creative Playmaking in the Primary School was published by Chatto and Windus in 1970 and he wrote a chapter for Drama in Education 2 (Pitman, 1973). Articles on English teaching and reviews have appeared in The Use of English, Language for Learning (Exeter), Pirandello Studies and Teachers World. A recent book on Britten and the Cambridge Connection is in the Britten-Pears Library. Educated at the Perse School, Cambridge, he has a Diploma (Cambridge) and M.Ed (Leicester).

Review :
Anglo-Irish plutocrat, the owner of Zarathustra, the horse that won the Gold Cup at Ascot in 1956, a recognized yet mysterious figure on that account in the Kildare Club and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, a sage who now has international fame under the name Wei Wu Wei, one of the leading lights of the theatre over in Britain under the name Terence Gray, a person who was half-forgotten in Ireland and in Britain until a biography was published last year under the marvellous title Only by Failure: the Many Faces of the Impossible Life of Terence Gray. -- Gabriel Rosenstock The Irish Times