FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE:
PHOTO: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qtcWFtZ4LQ8x92U92
Press Contact:
Bill Coyle – coyleentertainment@gmail.com, 917-279-6044
Julian Schlossberg
Presents
Academy Award Nominee and Emmy Award Winner
Renée Taylor
in
The New York Premiere of
By Renée Taylor and Joseph Bologna
Directed by Joseph Bologna
Six-Week Off-Broadway Engagement
Begins Thursday, July 12th
Opens Wednesday, July 25th at 7:00 PM
At Theatre at St. Clement’s (423 West 46 Street, between 9th & 10th Aves)
New York, NY (May 31, 2018) – Producer Julian Schlossberg announces that Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning writer and actress Renée Taylor – known to millions for her role as Fran Fine’s food-obsessed mother, Sylvia, on “The Nanny” – will return to the New York stage this summer in MY LIFE ON A DIET, an autobiographical comedy written by Ms. Taylor and her late husband Joseph Bologna. Originally directed by Mr. Bologna, MY LIFE ON A DIET will have its New York premiere Off-Broadway at Theatre at St. Clement’s (423 West 46 Street, between Ninth & Tenth Aves) beginning Thursday, July 12, 2018. The limited, 6-week engagement is currently scheduled to run through Sunday, August 19th. The Opening is Wednesday, July 25th at 7:00 p.m. Tickets to MY LIFE ON A DIET are now available online at MyLifeOnADietPlay.com or by calling Telecharge at (212) 239-6200.
Renée Taylor looks back on a life full of memorable roles in Hollywood and on Broadway, and just as many fad diets. A self-described “diet junkie,” Taylor, in MY LIFE ON A DIET, dishes out juicy anecdotes about — and weight loss tips from — Hollywood legends such as Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Cary Grant (she used to think that if she ate like star, she’d just might live like one). By sharing her high and lows – on and off the scale – as only she could, RenéeTaylor proves how the ability to laugh will get you through it all.
Renée explains, “A few years ago, I had the pleasure to work with my friend Nora Ephron on her wonderful play, Love, Loss, and What I Wore. I told her that, as a woman who had worn every size from 4 to 18 over the years, my version of the play would be called, ‘Love, Loss, and What I Ate.’ Well, this is that play, but I ended up calling it MY LIFE ON A DIET.”
Renée Taylor. Born in The Bronx, Renée made her professional stage debut at age 15 in a Purim Pageant at Madison Square Garden (earning $5 for her role as ‘Slave Girl’). She then appeared in the showcase Talent 60, which led to her earning her Actors Equity card, at age 19, for appearing in The Rehearsal at The President Theatre. Around this time Renée was also performing stand-up in Greenwich Village nightclubs (a young Barbra Streisand opened for her at Bon Soir). After seeing Renée in a production of Easy Does It, Elaine May cast her in her improvisational revue The Third Ear. Mike Nichols then cast her as a standby for Anne Jackson in the Broadway production of Luv in 1964. After seeing her go on in Luv, George Abbot cast her in Agatha Sue I Love You. Another time she went on, performing opposite Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks saw her and cast her as Eva Braun in his Academy Award-winning film The Producers. Renée married Joseph Bologna in 1965, and the two co-wrote the hit comedy Lovers and Other Strangers, which debuted on Broadway in 1968, with Renée featured in the cast. The couple received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 1970 film. Renée and Joe co-wrote and co-starred in Made for Each Other, receiving a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Comedy in 1971. The couple won Emmy Awards for writing the 1973 television special “Acts of Love and Other Comedies,” and were nominated once again the following year for writing the TV movie “Paradise.” They returned to Broadway in 1981, appearing in their play It Had to Be You, and again in 2001 in If you ever leave me … I’m going with you! Renée and Joe co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the 1984 TV movie “Bedrooms,” the 1989 film adaptation of It Had to Be You, and the 1996 film Love Is All There Is (which introduced a young Angelina Jolie). Together, the prolific couple collaborated on 22 plays, four film screenplays, and nine TV movies and series. Known for her Emmy nominated role of Sylvia Fine in “The Nanny,” Renée’s other TV acting credits include “Daddy Dearest” (opposite Richard Lewis and Don Rickles) and the groundbreaking HBO sitcom “Dream On” (she appeared on these three television shows simultaneously). More recently she has had recurring roles in “How I Met Your Mother,” “Bob’s Burger’s,” and “Happily Divorced.” Jerry Lewis gave Renée her big break in film, writing a role for her in The Errand Boy in 1961, and her many film credits also include A New Leaf, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Lovesick, White Place, Life During Wartime, Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, and more recently, The Do-Over and How To Be a Latin Lover.
Julian Schlossberg (Producer). Theatre: Bullets Over Broadway, Relatively Speaking, Sly Fox, Fortune’s Fool, Terms of Endearment, After the Night and the Music, Adult Entertainment, The Unexpected Man, Tommy Tune, Madame Melville, Taller Than a Dwarf, Beauty Queen of Leenane, Power Plays, If Love Were All, Death Defying Acts, Vita and Virginia, etc. Film: Widow’s Peak, In the Spirit, Bad Girls, No Nukes, Ten From Your Show of Shows. Television: “Mike Nichols – American Masters” (PBS), “Nichols and May” (PBS), “Elia Kazan: A Director’s Journey” (AMC), Claire Bloom’s “Shakespeare’s Women” (Bravo), “Lives of Lillian Hellman” (PBS). He is currently producing a fourteen hour series, “Witnesses to the 20th Century.” Mr. Schlossberg previously worked with Ms. Taylor when he presented It Had to Be You on Broadway in 1981.
MY LIFE ON A DIET is presented by Mr. Schlossberg in association with Morris S. Levy, Rodger Hess, Harold Newman, Jim Fantaci, Andrew Tobias, andRonald Glazer/Sabrina Hutt.
MY LIFE ON A DIET has set design by Harry Feiner, lighting design by Stefanie Risk and sound design by Jay Risk.
MY LIFE ON A DIET will be performed Off-Broadway at Theatre at St. Clement’s (423 West 46 Street, btw. Ninth & Tenth Aves). The limited engagement runs Thursday, July 12th through Sunday, August 19th. The performance schedule is as follows: Wednesdays at 2pm, Thursdays at 7pm, Fridays at 7 pm, Saturdays at 2 pm and 7pm, and Sundays at 3pm.
Tickets to MY LIFE ON A DIET — priced at $65 ($75 premium seating) — are now available online at MyLifeOnADietPlay.com or by calling Telecharge at (212) 239-6200.
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