| Birth Name: | Kenneth Jay Waissman |
| Birth Date: | 24 January 1940 |
| Birth Place: | Baltimore, MD |
| Occupation: | theatre producer |
Kenneth Waissman (born January 1940) is an American theatre producer.
Waissman's first Broadway credit was the 1971 Paul Zindel play And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little with Estelle Parsons and Julie Harris. The following year, while he and partner Maxine Fox were in Chicago, they attended Grease, a popular local play about high school life in the 1950s being performed at the Kingston Mines Theater in the Old Town section of the city.[1] [2] The two thought it would work better as a musical and encouraged its writers, Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, to relocate to New York City and embellish it with a score. The result was Grease, which Waissman and Fox mounted off-Broadway before transferring it uptown. It garnered him his first Tony nomination. He was nominated again for Over Here!; the third time proved to be the charm when he won not only a Tony but a Drama Desk Award as well for Torch Song Trilogy.