An Orlando director has officially gone Broadwayâ┚¬â€Âand he has the hardware to prove it. Kenny Howard is a founder and managing member of The Broadway Consortium, a group of investors who pool their funds to produce Broadway shows.
The Consortium won a Tony for â┚¬Å”Best Revival of a Musicalâ┚¬Â for their show The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess earlier this month.
Howard's partner, Orlando attorney Barry Miller, is also a member and the Consortium's other founder and managing member is Van Dean, a New York-based producer. The Broadway Consortium was founded in August of 2011. Miller and Howard invested in two shows the previous year and met Dean because he was the producer for one of those shows.
â┚¬Å”We realized we had the same business plan in mind and decided to join forces,â┚¬Â Howard said.
Their idea is to invest in Broadway shows while minimizing risk. The group of investorsâ┚¬â€Âeight currently in The Broadway Consortium, although they are open to expansionâ┚¬â€Âpool their financial resources and produce various Broadway shows each season.
â┚¬Å”I know people who invested heavily in one show and the show did poorly,â┚¬Â Howard said.
He said in more traditional models, investor and producers both raise money for shows. But depending on how much capital producers are able to score, they can get costs recouped that are not shared with the investors. In the Broadway Consortium, â┚¬Å”everything goes into the pot and we divide it equally,â┚¬Â Howard said.
They've been busy. The group invested in Bonnie and Clyde and Chinglish last fall and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Gore Vidal's The Best Man and Evita on Broadway in the spring. They also invested in Master Class, a show in London.
â┚¬Å”The consortium lucked out in the spring because shows financially did well,â┚¬Â Howard said.
Howard and the rest of the consortium members were hopeful when the Tony Awards were being handed out, but they knew it wasn't a sure thing. Howard said as they got closer to Porgy and Bess' category group, many of the awards were going to Follies. They started to lose hope.
When the win was announced, â┚¬Å”All I heard was â┚¬ËœGersch-,' and I started going crazy,â┚¬Â Howard said.
The Tony win comes after a tough start for The Broadway Consortium. Howard said their first two shows did not fare well financially.
â┚¬Å”Fall in Broadway was really tough,â┚¬Â he said. â┚¬Å”A lot of shows and musicals closed quickly.â┚¬ÂÂ
However, Howard said he believes in the shows they produced.
â┚¬Å”We didn't want to be seen as a company that was just going to come in and produce what might be seen as a sure fire hit,â┚¬Â he said. â┚¬Å”We want look at new material and inventive material and sometimes that works to someone's [financial] benefit and sometimes they don't do well.â┚¬ÂÂ
They're also expanding into music and launched Broadway Records in January.
â┚¬Å”Currently we have three albums out and another that's recording at the end of the month,â┚¬Â Howard said. â┚¬Å”They're doing very well.â┚¬ÂÂ
For the Orlando couple, success means their relationship has become mostly long distance, with Miller continuing to practice law in Orlando a Howard spending the majority of his time in New York. Howard plans a longer visit now that the Broadway season is over and he said Miller flies north as much as he can.
â┚¬Å”It's been tough, but the JetBlue flight attendants know [Miller] by name,â┚¬Â Howard said.
They bought a place in New York five years ago, when Howard started spending summers in the city directing. But he said they have â┚¬Å”too many ties in Orlandoâ┚¬Â to become full time, permanent New Yorkers.
â┚¬Å”I like the snowbird thing,â┚¬Â he said. â┚¬Å”It gets really cold here [in New York].â┚¬ÂÂ
