I actually cannot remember all that might have changed my life. In a couple of cases, teachers saved my life since my parents were too caught up with their own unhappiness to notice me. I don't think they changed my life; they saved my life.
When I was 9 in the summer of 1956, my family went to Kansas City, MO, where my dad attended a convention. One day, my mother, brother, another convention wife, and I went to a movie, The King and I. it was a major life changer: I discovered musical theatre and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and it moved my dinosaur obsession to the back burner.
When I was around 14, my Uncle Paul, who was in the American Legion, recruited me and my brother Macbeth to work at a refreshments booth in a fund-raising summer theatre project on the grounds of Old South School. The local community theatre was producing a faux-melodrama, Lily the Felon's Daughter, and live theatre became another obsession.
In winter 1979, the revival house in Symphony Space had a screening of The First Nudie Musical that so amused me I returned for the next showing and then spent the next day at The Drama Book Shop raving about it. That led to my contacting its creator Bruce Kimmel in 1992 or so, after my career had been short-circuited by a nasty little weasel on a big power trip. After the release of Unsung Sondheim and Liz Callaway's Frank Loesser album, my phone didn't stop ringing for a long long time.
Would that were still the case!
