Randy Weiner is a playwright, producer and theater and nightclub owner. Weiner is the creator of Queen of the Night at the Paramount Hotel in New York City, and recently served as the dramaturg for Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna. He, along with a few other theater school graduates, established a small theater troupe in New York City called Project 400 Theatre Group, which specializes in creating avant-garde musical productions which married classic theater and modern music. In collaboration with Diane Paulus, his wife, he co-created The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which ran off-Broadway from 1999 to 2005. In February 2007, Weiner co-founded (with partners Richard Kimmel and Simon Hammerstein) the Box theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In January 2014, Weiner and partner Aby Rosen unveiled the Diamond Horseshoe supper club in midtown Manhattan.
Randy Weiner could have done anything with his life.
And he would have been a massive success at whatever he chose. Biochemist, lawyer, Hollywood screenwriter, Jewish hip-hop star . . . it all could have happened.
We sat down to talk about how he carved this unique niche for himself and . . .
- How a Biochemistry Degree from Harvard helped prepare him for the theater.
- How his marketing budget for Sleep No More was ZERO. And why he thinks a Broadway show can do the same thing.
- What about Broadway terrifies him.
- Why his projects attract “The Cool Kids”. . . from celebrities to private equity firms.
- His strategy for raising money for projects that people can’t see beforehand.
Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway