Randy Weiner is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 playwright, producer and theater/nightclub owner. Weiner co-wrote the Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway

Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...

 musical The Donkey Show

The Donkey Show (musical)

The Donkey Show: A Midsummer Night's Disco is a theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The production, created in a disco-era style, was written by Diane Paulus and her husband Randy Weiner and first appeared Off-Broadway, opening August 18, 1999. The show subsequently...

 and, as one-third of EMURSIVE, produced the Drama Desk Award

Drama Desk Award

The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...

 winning New York premiere of Punchdrunk's

Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk is a British theatre company, formed in 2000, the pioneer of a form of "immersive" presentation in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. This format is related to "promenade theatre"....

 Sleep No More. He is co-owner of NYC

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 "theater of varieties" The Box and The Box Soho

The Box Soho

The Box Soho is a cabaret nightclub located at 11-12 Walker's Court in Soho, London, located in the old building of the notorious former Raymond Revue Bar. Opened on February 9, 2011, it bills itself as a "theatre of varieties" and is a sister club to The Box Manhattan, New York City...

.

Personal life

Weiner was born Edward Randall Weiner, the son of a New York banker and lawyer. He graduated cum laude from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. On October 1, 1995, he married fellow theater arts graduate Diane Paulus

Diane Paulus

Diane Paulus is an American director of theater and opera who became Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University in 2009. Paulus was nominated for the Best Director Tony Award for her revival of Hair...

.

Career

Weiner and Paulus along with a few other theater school graduates established a small theater troupe in New York City called Project 400 Theatre Group. With Project 400, Weiner and Paulus specialized in creating avante-garde musical productions which married classic theater and modern music. These included a rock version of The Tempest

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

, an R&B Phaedra

Phaedra (Seneca)

Phaedra, sometimes known as Hippolytus, is a play by Seneca the Younger, telling the story of Phaedra and her taboo love for her stepson Hippolytus...

and a hip-hop Lohengrin

Lohengrin (opera)

Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...

.

In collaboration with Paulus, Weiner co-created The Donkey Show

The Donkey Show (musical)

The Donkey Show: A Midsummer Night's Disco is a theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The production, created in a disco-era style, was written by Diane Paulus and her husband Randy Weiner and first appeared Off-Broadway, opening August 18, 1999. The show subsequently...

, a disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

 adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which ran off-Broadway from 1999 to 2005 and was revived in 2009 for Paulus' first production as director of the American Repertory Theater. Critics cited the production as an exemplary of a trend in which edgy avante-garde theater had become fashionably mainstream

Mainstream

Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....

.

In February 2007, Weiner cofounded (with partners Richard Kimmel

Richard Kimmel

Richard Kimmel is a New York-based theatre director, writer, and theatrical producer. He is Executive Director of The Box, a venue for theater, music, and nightlife in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and Artistic Director of Cannon Company, a performing ensemble.-Biography:Kimmel is a graduate of...

 and Simon Hammerstein) the Box theater on the Lower East Side

Lower East Side

The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....

 of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

. The cabaret theater has drawn attention for its risque burlesque acts. In September 2009, Weiner and Hammerstein announced the opening of Purgatorio, a temporary Halloween-season nightclub with a macabre sex-based theme.

Weiner has served on the Advisory Committee on the Arts at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. He has guest lectured on theater arts at Columbia University, Barnard College, New York University, and Yale.