Plays and movies that changed my life - Some pop to mind.
Seeing FOUR ON A GARDEN, starring Carol Channing and Sid Caesar (also in the cast, it turns out, a young Tommy Lee Jones - maybe that should be in a trivia question somewhere). I had seen HELLO DOLLY starring Merman months earlier, been hooked on the power of live theater, had to be convinced that there was no Merman recording of DOLLY, so I "settled" for the Channing recording, which I played over and over. My dad and I were out doing something I can't remember (I was ten) and he said I heard Carol Channing is in a new show, why don't we try to get tickets? Being a tiny bit of a bargain-hunter, Dad noticed several people outside the theater trying to get rid of tickets, and one of them had eighth row center, which he grabbed. But the point was not the play itself, a multi-part sex farce that I was too young to fully understand, but that my Dad had given his stamp of approval to my newly discovered love of theater, and started taking opportunities for the whole family to make such outings as often as possible.
Seeing THREEPENNY OPERA and HAPPY END in one season (1976-77) and being so excited by the possibilties of that kind of storytelling made me decide that I had to at least try to be creative someday.
Seeing BREAKING AWAY at 19 and just sitting in the movie theater, not leaving, watching it three times - I was about to enter a combined senior year/graduate study year in college, having been scared to go away and be out on my own for regular college. I left that movie having decided that I needed to get out of my parents' house for law school. That may not have been the intended message of the movie, but I somehow focused on the growth possibilities of getting out of one's parents' house for a while.