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What does Ira Weitzman do? Even people who have worked with him can't pin it down. He doesn't direct; he's neither a composer nor a librettist; and he's not a producer -- exactly. But he's been crucial to the development of some of the most inspired musical theatre of the last two decades: William Finn and James Lapine's Falsettos trilogy, Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George (written with Lapine) and Assassins (with John Weidman), Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Lucky Stiff, Once on This Island and My Favorite Year, and Michael John LaChiusa and director Graciela Daniele's Hello, Again. Most recently, he's teamed Daniele with composer Bob Telson for the Lincoln Center production of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a music-theatre adaptation of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novella, opening this month at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway.
A slight, intense, fast-talking native New Yorker, Weitzman started his career at Playwrights Horizons in 1978, creating and running the then-unknown venue's musical theatre department. In 1992 he moved with Playwrights' artistic director Andre Bishop to Lincoln Center Theater where he holds the title of director of musical theatre. Part godfather, part midwife, part therapist, part impresario, he spends his days prodding the complex organisms that are musical theatre projects into existence.
One day, however, forced to wait for a plumber to appear at his Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, Weitzman used the time to talk about musical theatre in America and his place in it.
FRICKER: What's your assessment of the state of the musical theatre today?
WEITZMAN: The musical theatre doesn't know...