Christina Applegate (center) with Corinne McFadden and Kisha Howard from "Sweet Charity" / Wireimage
Barry Weissler Exclusive:
Day 18
By Barry Weissler, Looking For New Projects
Thu Feb 7, 2008
I look for projects that tell a story about humanity. Stories with characters that draw you in, that bring you in so deeply that you become a part of their struggle. Sometimes the most important and genuine thing you can do for an audience member is just to play their fantasies out before them, right or wrong. Give them a mirror, a space to play out their all their “what ifs?”
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for an audience is to give them a chance to breathe, to make them laugh, to rejuvenate them with the strength to face their individual struggles after the show is over. But, these are critical times. More and more, we need art and theater that corresponds to the circumstances.
We are in a unique time in human history. The world appears to be falling apart around us. What makes a story work is the same as it has always been, but the need to awaken people to what is going on in the world, grows every day.
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.