#HealMeToo Festival Presents: GUTLESS & GRATEFUL This Saturday

Following sold-out runs at theatres nationwide and headlining international conferences, award-winning actress and playwright Amy Oestreicher brings her hit one-woman musical to the #HealMeToo Festival, as seen on NBC's Today, CBS, Huffington Post, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, TEDx, and more. Gutless & Grateful is back in New York as part of the #HealMeToo Festival this Saturday, April 13th at 7pm. The performance will be followed by a talkback on healing from sexual assault, cultivating resilience, and sharing stories through theatre. Tickets are discounted if purchased in advance on the festival's website at http://tinyurl.com/hm2grateful.

At NYC's West Village IRT Theater, this first-ever Festival will bring together over 50 artists and experts for performances, panels and participatory workshops. In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the festival creates an intersectional space for conversation that celebrates healing and inspires cultural change.

Nominated for "Best Theatre Debut" in 2012 (Broadway World), Gutless & Grateful: A Musical Feast takes audiences on a musical journey of hope, determination, and perseverance. The show also includes a song David Friedman wrote for my story, with lyrics by Kathie Lee Gifford.

"One part moving testament to human indomitability, the other a thoroughly satisfying evening of song. While each element is strong enough to stand on its own, combined they illuminate and enhance each other. Rarely have I seen narration and song so artfully meshed, and Oestreicher's likeability, good humor, interpretive skill, and manifest commitment to what she is saying and singing make us not only understand her story, but also feel it on a very deep level." - Roy Sanders, Bistro Awards

Gutless & Grateful: The Deliciously Inspiring One-Woman Musical by Amy Oestreicher is a family-friendly comedic journey of hope, resilience and gratitude, with original music by Oestreicher, Kathie Lee Gifford and David Friedman, Sondheim, Cy Coleman, Ricky Ian Gordon, and others.

The week before her senior prom and Amy had only just acknowledged that she'd experienced sexual abuse by a trusted mentor. That's when she abruptly developed a blood clot that caused her stomach to explode, collapsing both her lungs. She nearly died.

Upon waking from a coma several months later, Amy no longer had a stomach. After 27 surgeries and years unable to drink a drop of fluid, Amy discovered that you never know what you're capable of until you're tested, and that the gifts of a "detour" can be beautifully rewarding. Her story shows just how much the human spirit can heal through "gutsiness," gratitude, and an overabundance of humor.

Amy Oestreicher is an Audie award-nominated playwright, actress, artist, author, speaker for RAINN and TEDx, writer for The Huffington Post, award-winning health advocate, and composer, eagerly sharing the lessons learned from a decade of trauma through her writing, performance, art and speaking. She has given three TEDx talks on transforming adversity to creative growth, and her story and show have appeared on the TODAY Show, CBS, WNBC Cosmopolitan, Seventeen Magazine, Unmistakable Creative, Good Housekeeping, among others, and her writings have appeared in over 70 notable lifestyle, wellness, and arts publications. Amy's "beautiful detour" inspired her to create the #LoveMyDetour movement, a campaign inspiring people to flourish because of, rather than in spite of challenges- also the subject of her upcoming book, My Beautiful Detour.

Tickets for the Saturday performance are available now on the HealMeToo Festival website http://tinyurl.com/hm2grateful.