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Love of books inspired show

Diane Luby Lane was drawn to the classics inside a Japanese bath house. Tradition called for the bathing ritual prior to dinner, so when lounging with fellow models, she heard the Asian women mention their reading material.

"It was such a shock," says Lane, a New Jersey native.

While the Japanese models casually spoke of Faust and Goethe, Lane's Nightstand and motivational books and romance novels.

The model/actress spent the next 10 years reading Walt Witman, Dostoyevsky and other greats-books she shunned in high school as geek material.

"They rocked my world. They're not classis because they're old, they're classic because they're great."

She tells her story in her one-person show "Born Feet First." She will perform Sat., Dec. 9 at 2p.m. at Barnes and Noble at The Grove.

The show opens on Route 22, a freeway where she often sat as a teen, "waiting for something to happen…I felt like life could be so much more exciting that mine actually was," she says.

She knew someday something special would happen to her, because she was born feet first, a sign of luck; only two percent of all babies are born this way."
Later she discovers "it is the commonest things around us (for me my love of books and reading, for someone else surfing, or music, or animals) that define us and make us who we are."

She first performed the show one-and-a-half years ago to rave reviews. A pivotal moment was when one of the characters she plays - Chicago poet Jimmy Santiago Baca - sat in the audience.

In talking to him, Lane found that while he taught himself to read and write in prison - "we felt the same, even though we had very different stories."

Her meeting with Baca, along with teachers and students who attended the performance, inspired her to found a 12-week Get Lit poetry, literature and performance workshop in public schools.  Her affliction with Youth Speaks in San Francisco and as a member of a guerilla poetry group with actress Viveca Lindfors in New York City also helped create her Get Lit curriculum.

Equipped with contemporary poetry, she continues the workshops, aimed to ignite a passion in teens for the written word. Lane figured if she could go from a low-achieving student to someone who reads, understands and love of Dostoyevsky, anyone could.

But just about any book is worthwhile reading to Lane from Danielle Steele to Tolstoy. These days, however, the mother of the two - she and her husband live on N. Orange Grove Ave. Mostly reading children's books, she says.