Here’s What Courage Looks Like

I never knew Dick Leitsch, a Kentucky boy turned New Yorker, who died last month.  But what courage it must have taken to be openly gay back in the Fifties — even in New York — when he first began advocating for equal rights. (A New York Times headline describing his work at the time: “3 DEVIATES INVITE EXCLUSION BY BARS.”)

Read his life here.  And the wonderful way he handled his death, here.  (“If I knew dying was this fun, I would have done it years ago!”)

Love is love.

Friendship is everything.

And guess who else liked MY LIFE ON A DIET?  The New York Times!  (Here.)  Lots of good little press prior to the opening and afterward, but we were worried about the Times, because, well, it’s not exactly Shakespeare.  But they seemed as charmed as everyone else.  (” There is something spicy going on at the Theater at St. Clement’s. Ms. Taylor mixes reminiscences about her childhood and beginnings as an actress and writer with a lighthearted look at her self-image and quest for love. A veritable depository of old-fashioned zingers … one-liners and well-timed pauses.”)

As our tag line says, “You’ll drop 300 calories laughing.”

And won’t it be fun to be one of the youngest members of an audience, for a change?

But the youngsters I saw it with, 22 and 33, really enjoyed it, too.

So don’t be put off by the octogenarians in the crowd — for all you know, they’re each as special, in their own ways, as the octogenarian on stage.