Ken Gentry, Fran Weissler, Molly Ringwald, Barry Weissler and Carlos Arana/Wireimage
Barry Weissler Exclusive:
Day 6
By Barry Weissler, Producing
Tue Jan 22, 2008
More than anything else, my job is about putting people together, and in the theater world this often is a little like building a family. It takes years of practice to do this well. You have to learn through years of work and testing to see what kind of person is good for what role. Of course, it is important to see their body of work, but that’s not enough. I must know what they stand for, and the chemistry between all the people must be right. For the life span of the project, we form a small society. And for the time we are together we are a kind of family. The bond that forms often outlives the project itself and comes to inform future endeavors.
As a producer, one is accountable for the family, keeping all the threads together, guiding and nurturing towards mutual goals. Nothing good comes out of pressure and even persuasion must be benevolent.
All of my hiring mistakes occurred when I hired by people for their reputations alone. You must know what you are dealing with. That is why it's really best if you have grown together.
Until tomorrow…
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.