Katrina, 1 year later / Wireimage
Barry Weissler Exclusive:
Day 20
Tue Feb 12, 2008
The environmental decline is a major issue. It is probably the single most important issue today. The lack of acceptance of responsibility will kill us all. Everyone has to do something.
Currently I am working on putting on Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People”. Even though it was written in 1882, it might as well have been written today, in America, about this time, about this government.
It is the story of Dr. Stockmann, a popular doctor in a small town in coastal Norway. He and his brother develop an idea to create medicinal hot spring baths, thereby turning the town into a major tourist attraction and the whole town is thrilled at the potential prosperity this will bring. But the doctor soon learns that these baths are poisonous and contaminated with waste from the local tannery. They are making people sick. When he speaks out, every last person turns against him. He is not only shunned but vilified and treated as a lunatic. But he perseveres, challenging the establishment.
We all have to be Dr. Stockmann. These days it can’t be just a few voices, it has to be everyone.
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.