Barry Weissler Exclusive:
Day 5
By Barry Weissler, The Great Story
Fri Jan 18, 2008
People ask me how I choose my projects. Is it instinct or knowledge? Its gut instinct but if truth be known, this gut instinct comes from knowledge and experience. It takes years and years of work to hone the instincts. They do not come out of the air. They are impulses preset by what we learn. But instinct or no, anyone knows a great story from a weak one.
A great story is easy to recognize, yet hard to describe. In a great story you learn, and you get involved. These great stories are often character driven, but perhaps more importantly, they are idea driven. These great stories live in every part of life.
It can be in any of the arts. In theater, literature, music, dance, even the visual arts. A painting is a story that is more than just the subject of the painting. I saw a painting of Claudio Bravo’s recently. It was a painting of green silk. His technique has such a quality that it opens the imagination and makes me think of ideas. Great sculpture draws you in. You want to walk around it. You want to see it from all angles so you don’t miss anything.
Good theater must never be a demonstration. It must be a revelation. Great artists and directors understand this. The painter’s work is never just about the subject of the painting. Neither the painter nor great director will simply display. They let the wall between the audience and the stage or canvas dissolve. This takes courage and enormous self-confidence.
Until next week…
Broadway producers Barry & Fran Weissler are the recipients of five Tony Awards®. Their numerous Broadway credits include acclaimed productions Othello with James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer, My One and Only with Tommy Tune, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Kathleen Turner and Charles Durning, Gypsy with Tyne Daly, and the Tony Award-winning productions of Falsettos and Annie Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters and Reba McEntire, among others. They are currently represented on Broadway – and across the globe -- with the international smash hit Chicago, which earned six 1997 Tony Awards® including Best Musical Revival, as well as countless other awards in the U.S. and abroad.