HOW TO BE A PRODUCER.(theatrical producer Daryl Roth)

The morning after "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?," by Edward Albee, opened in New York, the play's producers met with their advertising agents around a long table in an office above Times Square. If a production receives immediate critical applause, this kind of meeting is just "champagne and lolling about," as one of those present put it. But the reviews had been mixed, and the mood in the room was anxious and businesslike. For a while, nobody touched the small cake, decorated with an iced goat, on the center of the table.

Edward Albee sat at one end of the room. He said little, although on one occasion he dryly corrected someone's pronunciation of his name: "It's Awl-bee, not Al-bee." A handful of producers and advertising executives discussed radio spots and the best quotations to pull from that morning's reviews. (From the Times: "Four decades after 'Virginia Woolf' sent shock waves through the mainstream theater, Mr. Albee still asks questions that no other major American dramatist dares to ask" rather than "too much repetition of message-hammering speeches," from the same review.) When the discussion lost its way or got unruly, a producer named Daryl Roth, a slim, chic woman in her late fifties--looking like a European sovereign who had slipped away from bodyguards--restored order.

There are two kinds of theatrical producers. One is the super-investor, who puts enough money into a production (in this case, a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars) to earn "producer" billing on the poster and in the program, and who gets a moment at the podium if the play wins a Tony. This category was represented at the meeting by several quiet middle-aged men in good suits, as well as by a woman with bright-blond hair and an unnervingly dark tan, who had arrived in a fur coat. "I don't want to hear about family crises in the ads!" she said, in a loud, deep voice. "We all have enough of our own!" Later, she was struck by the idea that theatre tickets could be sold on what she called "the webnet." She seemed put out to learn that someone had already thought of this.

The other kind of theatrical producer is the working, or "lead," producer. "The Goat" had two of these: Daryl Roth and Elizabeth Ireland McCann. Usually, a play's lead producers have optioned the material and brought in most of the money (some of it their own, some from other investors). They promote and market a show and, once it has opened, capitalize on related opportunities--tours, amateur sales, television, film. It is also the job of lead producers to make sure that the investor-producers feel included in the process. So Daryl Roth took respectful note when the woman with the fur coat said, "Why don't we go on eBay?"

Daryl Roth began in this business relatively late in life, after many years as a wife and mother and part-time interior designer in northern New Jersey. But in her first fourteen years of producing she backed four plays that went on to win Pulitzer Prizes: "Three Tall Women," by Edward Albee; "How I Learned to Drive," by Paula Vogel; "Wit," by Margaret Edson; and "Proof," last season's hit by David Auburn. Thanks to this record, Roth became what one critic calls an "Off Broadway icon"; Crain's put her on a list of the hundred most influential women in New York business. Vogel compares Roth with Lucille Lortel, the wealthy and adventurous producer and theatre owner--the "Queen of Off Broadway"--who died in 1999. As Roth's friend the film and theatre producer Scott Rudin says, "Daryl believes in plays, and that puts her in a highly rarefied group. I think a lot of other people are looking for an angle, a promotional hook, a title. She believes in the well-made play, and she has a real appreciation of theatrical language. It's always the unexpected thing that works, and she's up for the unexpected."

Roth's office, an enclave of antique domestic furnishings in a modern midtown skyscraper, feels like the room marked "Study" in a rock star's mansion. Several awards and nominations hang on the wall. There is a fine wooden desk that Roth calls "too pretty" to put a computer on, as well as scores of family photographs and a sofa with ...