Margo Lion is a four-time Tony Award-winning producer. Her productions have garnered 20 Tony Awards, 30 Drama Desk Awards, eight Obie Awards and one Pulitzer Prize. Her Broadway production credits include: Hairspray; Caroline, or Change; Elaine Stritch: At Liberty; The Crucible; Triumph of Love; Seven Guitars; Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika; Jelly’s Last Jam and I Hate Hamlet.

Originally you were a teacher. How did you become a producer?
Sarah Bernhardt was my nickname when I was a child, so I guess I was destined to work in the theatre. But it was joining my former husband when he was in the MFA Playwriting program of the University of Iowa that provided the catalyst for my decision to be a producer. I watched the process of making theatre and decided I wanted to be part of that process. I could offer enthusiasm and support, so I set out to apprentice a New York producer. My cousin, choreographer/director Martha Clarke, introduced me to Lyn Austin and The Music-Theatre Group. It was with Lyn that I learned the ropes – everything from sweeping dressing room floors to commissioning new work.

You have worked on new plays, new musicals, revivals and one-person shows. What attracts you to a project?
I gravitate to a new work that has some contemporary resonance. Shows like Jelly’s Last Jam and Angels in America – even Hairspray – speak to ideas that the are part of the cultural discussion. And sometimes I produce a commercial run of an existing show like Elaine Stritch: At Liberty or Caroline, or Change because it is a unique expression of the power of theatre. I’ve only been part of one revival, The Crucible, because it was especially timely in 2001. And, of course, I loved the idea of being on the team to bring an Arthur Miller play to Broadway. Since I can’t second-guess the audience and know what will be a success, I work on projects that I’d like to see on the stage.

How have you managed to be so successful in such a male-dominated industry?
There are a number of women in the producing end of the theatre. And if you do your job well enough, you’re respected for the work you do. This isn’t to deny that it is sometimes easier for men to raise money, given a more developed network of contacts in the financial and corporate worlds.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have had to face?
Raising money has definitely been the hardest part of the job. Finding individuals as well as interested corporate partners is always a challenge.

How much artistic input do you have in a production?
Most of my creative involvement in a production occurs at the very beginning of the process. When I commission a show, I choose the writers, director and choreographer. After that, I see my role more as a third eye. It’s important to support your artistic team as well as to provide an objective view of the material. In situations where a show is already written or produced in a not-for-profit venue, my creative input centers on casting choices and marketing and advertising decisions.

You are currently represented on Broadway by the Tony Award-winning megahit Hairspray. What inspired you to adapt it for the stage, and did you expect it to achieve such incredible success?
I credit an extraordinary creative team for the success of Hairspray. Along with that blessing, the show has a simple strong story of a heroine who was determined to make her dream come true despite the odds. And, of course, the material provides a flood of opportunities for music and dance.

Your newest project, The Wedding Singer, is another musical adaptation of a film. What are the special challenges in adapting a film to the stage, and what is it about this story that you think will appeal to an audience?
When a film is adapted for the stage, the first step is to reimagine the story for a new medium. The story needs to be distilled to allow for musical numbers to carry the narrative forward and to provide the emotional ballast of the piece. The Wedding Singer has a central character driven by the simple desire to find romance in the cynical world of the eighties when money and fame seemed to trump “love ever after.” Music and dance adapted from the sounds and moves of the decade provide a multitude of opportunities for musical numbers. And, finally, the show has wit and style and a great big heart.

Hairspray is a huge financial success, but most productions don’t make back their original costs. What should a potential investor consider before backing a show?
There are two questions an investor must ask before coming onboard a Broadway show: Can I afford to lose the money and do I love the project? If you can answer yes to both those questions, win or lose you’ll have a great time. Finally, it’s a good rule of thumb to make sure the show can recoup in a year or a bit longer at 80-percent capacity.

Benjamin Mordecai is associate dean of the Yale School of Drama and a four-time Tony Award-winning producer. He is currently represented on Broadway by Brooklyn, the Musical. Other notable productions include August Wilson’s King Hedley II, Jitney and Seven Guitars and David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child. He has received numerous awards, including two NAACP Theatre Awards – the Olivier Award, and the Robert Whitehead Award for “outstanding achievement in commercial theatre producing.”

What attracts you to a project?
I think the decision to produce anything is a personal one. You are going to live with the project for a year. You try to do everything possible in support of it. So I feel that you really have to be able to commit to the work and to feel that it is worth your time. I have a long-standing relationship with August Wilson, and I’ve produced work by Lanford Wilson, David Henry Hwang and Anna Deveare Smith. These are all artists whom I really admire. What tends to be similar among the works I’m involved with is that they are text-based. Take Brooklyn for example. I went to see it in Denver. Usually I get involved with a project from the very beginning, but it had already been mounted. I just thought that the show was worthwhile and would have a very substantial audience.

What is the appeal of Brooklyn?
In terms of the story, it is a simple fairytale that operates on several levels, all of which I think have an appeal. It’s about a girl looking for, finding, losing and getting her father back. It’s a version of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Secondly, it’s about the spirit of artists who are struggling on the streets of New York, which has a certain appeal. Add to that the wonderful music by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson, truly extraordinary performances and production concept by the artists and actors, and Jeff Calhoun’s direction. To be a part of helping to introduce the wonderful young talent involved in the production to New York audiences appealed to me. And I also thought that the show would be commercially successful.

How much artistic input do you have in a production?
I am perhaps known more as a hands-on producer. But I think a producer earns his or her way into the collaborative process with the artist by being there a lot, watching, understanding what the principal artists are trying to accomplish, and then being able to be another pair of eyes and helping them toward their goal. What doesn’t work is when someone who is not a part of the creative team comes in and says that something doesn’t work and it must be changed. I always describe my own involvement by saying that I earned my place at the table by watching the principal artist.

My involvement will vary by show. Usually I find myself commenting on what I think is going on that is not supportive of what the goals are. I try to encourage the artist to take a look at those moments to find solutions that will address them. Sometimes the artist will take a comment that I make and come up with a different thought. I don’t consider myself the principal artist in the development, but I definitely consider myself a collaborator.

What are your biggest challenges?
Raising money is always an issue. The Broadway stage is a pretty unforgiving place. Generally speaking, it is very hard to do creative work with so many people around you and when the pressures are so intense. So I like to know that the work is really developed prior to committing to moving forward to Broadway. And that’s a hard thing.

What advice would you give to a potential investor in a Broadway show?
Investing in the theatre is obviously an extremely high-risk venture. I always encourage new investors to identify a producer that they feel confident about and to plan on investing in several of that producer’s shows. And to try not to pick the winner. It’s sort of like – this is an exaggeration – diversification in capital markets or in a venture capital fund. No one can tell you he’s got a winner. There are some that appear more likely than others. No matter what, it’s a crapshoot. If anybody did know how to pick winners everybody would just be investing with them all the time. And that just doesn’t happen. Producers don’t produce shows that they don’t believe have the potential to succeed.

David Binder has spent the last decade bringing new artists and audiences to the theatre. In addition to his Tony Award-winning, record-breaking revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, his theatre credits include John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s rock-and-roll musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch and the international high-flying spectacle De La Guarda, which recently closed Off Broadway after six and a half years and continues to play around the world. In October 2004, Binder received the prestigious Robert Whitehead Award for “outstanding achievement in commercial theatre producing.”

How did you become a producer?
After college I moved to NYC and started producing theatrical events, benefits and awards shows, which gave me a chance to learn about how to put a live event together. I did a reading of The Normal Heart for one night with Barbara Streisand, Stockard Channing, John Turturro and Kevin Bacon. I did the Drama Desk Awards and events at Carnegie Hall and Central Park. Anything I could get my hands on.

During this time I met John Cameron Mitchell who had this show about a rock-and-roll transsexual who had a botched sex change operation, and he asked me if I’d like to work on it with him. I did, and that later became Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

What attracts you to a project?
I have to do projects that I love and am passionate about. The projects I’ve chosen have come in different forms. De La Guarda is massive performance art that has no text. Raisin in the Sun is a classic text that takes place in one apartment. Hedwig is a rock-and-roll musical that reinvents the musical theatre form.

Much of your work appeals to the nontraditional theatre audience. Are you trying to attract a
particular theatregoer?
I’m not your traditional theatergoer and don’t represent that older, traditional theatre-going audience that we associate with Broadway. I want to go to a nightclub where there are interesting people who represent the spectrum of NYC – gay, straight, multi-racial, the whole thing. That is my peer group, with whom I live my life and who wants to see my work. It is not a calculated thing that I want to reach X or Y audience. It’s that I want to present work that my friends would want to see, that I can take my mother or my boyfriend to. Ideally, the work can reach everybody.

How much artistic input do you have?
It varies. I was involved with Hedwig from its inception and through readings and presentations. I saw De La Guarda abroad. It was finished and I brought it to New York. I had the idea to do Raisin in the Sun, then found Kenny Leon. Together we got designers and a cast. I enjoy being part of the process of creating a project.

Could you elaborate on what it took to bring Raisin in the Sun to Broadway?
It took five years and a lot of perseverance. From great efforts come great things. But it wasn’t just my effort – it was the efforts of the people who work with me, Kenny Leon and the casting director. Actors weren’t interested in being in it. The play had not been done since the original production in 1959. Producers felt that you couldn’t get an African American audience to come to the theatre and that the play was dated, which proved to be wrong.

How did you think of presenting it?
I happened to see a regional production of it. It was a wonderful play that a whole generation had never seen.

You are also known for being very innovative in your marketing.
When you have limited ad dollars and an audience that doesn’t read traditional press when choosing entertainment, you have to reach out through nontraditional means – that can be a street team or the radio. We did huge advertising on the subways, street promotions, lots of Internet and electronic outreach. With Raisin in the Sun it’s not about running an ad in the Sunday Times because that’s not where our audience is. And the show is the second highest grossing play in the history of the Broadway commercial theatre. We made a significant profit in a very short time – 15 weeks of run – and a very significant return for our investors.

What advice would you give to a potential investor in a Broadway show?
When you invest in the theatre, know that you might lose your entire investment. Don’t invest in a show because you think you are going to make money. You should invest in shows that you would really like to go see and enjoy. Then, if the investment goes south, at least you will have the pleasure of knowing that you invested in something that you felt good about.

Daryl Roth is a two-time Tony Award-winning producer. She has produced five Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: Proof by David Auburn, Wit by Margaret Edson, How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel, Three Tall Women by Edward Albee and Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz. This season she is bringing a revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Broadway. Among her proudest accomplishments is the creation of the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, which is dedicated to nurturing and supporting theatre artists.

How did you become a producer?
About 17 years ago, I was on the City Center board and got to know Richard Maltby, who was a committee resident professional. He invited me to a club where they were singing songs that he and David Shire had written. I loved the songs and asked Richard if he’d let me take them and try to figure out what might make an interesting theatrical evening. He agreed and the project became Closer Than Ever, the first show I produced. After playing it in Williamstown, I brought it to the Cherry Lane Theatre and it ran for nine months. It was a small project, so I could get involved in every aspect. I was totally devoted, loved it and just felt it was the right thing. I think a lot had to do with the songs, which were about life chapters, and I was at the point in my life where I was open to what that next opportunity might be.

You are known as a champion of original and thought-provoking work. What attracts you to a project?
I’m very interested in plays that have strong characters or that give a new way of looking at things or understanding a community. I like material that makes me feel intimate with the characters. How I Learned to Drive is a very intimate story with a bigger issue at hand. Wit is a character-driven piece with a story that really radiates many other issues. The work that I look for is usually a personal story that has a very wide and universal appeal and challenges me emotionally and intellectually.

What are some of the greatest challenges you face as a producer?
The biggest challenge is finding the capitalization of the project. And the second biggest is bringing in the audiences. I guess having a successful track record helps. Tenacity helps.

How much artistic input do you have?
I have a lot of artistic input because that’s the joy of it for me. There are different levels of opportunity though. Caroline, or Change was an already existing project. Usually I am more involved from the beginning, starting with choosing the play, then getting involved with the writer, then choosing the director and artistic team. That’s what I prefer. Mambo Kings, a new project, is from square one, so every decision is collaborative. I would never overstep my bounds but the input, digestion of facts and conversations that happen before decision-making is where I like to have input. People can take it or leave it, but at least they’ve got the opinion of someone who cares greatly about the project and, in many cases, has hired them. By hiring a creative team you are bringing in people whom you trust in terms of their judgment and taste. That act of faith is the first collaboration. Dialogue is the key.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is your fifth Albee play – what about his work appeals to you?
He is one of our greatest playwrights. What is particularly special is that his work is intensely personal but at the same time very universal. He is able to talk about human issues in a way that is very unique. It’s his own voice, but he gets to the core in a way that is searing. He looks deep into the face of dysfunction. He seems to find truth, then revelation. He has this clarity of language. There is always rhythm in his words, almost like music.

You are co-producing The Mambo Kings with your son. Can you talk about that experience?
We have a shared love of theatre and we work well together because we are on the same wavelength. Our skills are very different so we complement each other. Jordan is very detail-oriented, very good at the business end, the contracts, dealing with people. I am probably stronger in the grand scheme of things, in the visual. So far it’s been a very nice weaving together of our skills.

The show will open officially in August. The thing that I love about Mambo Kings is it’s really the American dream. Two brothers come from Cuba to find their way in the world of music. It was first a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, then a movie. The musical is a combination of the best of both.