Job Title: Broadway Producer Employers:Self- employed Openings: Attend workshops and know the right people Salary Cap: Mid seven figures Number of Jobs: About 300

Marc Falato has led a charmed life. First, he made a pretty penny at a successful career in banking, then, he left the industry to try the theater. In just five years, he won two Tony Awards for producing efforts: the 2005 revival of Glengarry Glen Ross and last year's Spring Awakening. Moreover, both shows turned a profit, and Spring Awakening is still running.

"I completely recognize that it can't be this easy," says the 43-year-old Falato, who keeps his awards on a shelf in his living room. "It's humbling to get involved with projects I deeply care about, have the rest of the theater community feel the same way about it, and have the show rewarded."

Falato came to producing after an extensive career in global finance, spending three years as an international bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before earning an M.B.A. from New York University in 1992. For the next 11 years, he worked at TD Securities arranging project financing for telecommunications companies, but left in 2003 with an eye towards something more creative.

Falato eventually formed ZenDog Productions (the name refers to Falato's golden retriever Dharma) in early 2004 with Pun Bandhu, a Yale School of Drama graduate he met through a mutual friend. While taking a seminar on producing, Falato met Jeffrey Richards, who invited him to a play reading and asked for his comments. Falato's critique impressed Richards enough to invite him to help produce the 2005 revival of the David Mamet play, Glengarry Glen Ross, starring Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber. When that proved fruitful—the play won a Tony for best revival—Richards approached ZenDog the following year to work on Spring Awakening, a new musical based on the 1891 German play by Frank Wedekind.

To qualify as a full producer on these shows, Falato had to raise 10 percent of the total capital required from qualified investors. For Glengarry Glen Ross, this meant raising about $250,000, while for Spring Awakening, the amount was $600,000 (straight plays typically cost $2.5 million to $3 million to stage, while musicals are more expensive, usually $5 million to $15 million).

For Glengarry, Falato approached eligible friends, family, and business associates to invest, while for Spring Awakening, he was able to widen the network through referrals. Ironically, it was difficult to tap old colleagues. "Bankers and lawyers tend to be really conservative; investing in theater is not something they understand," he says.

Falato also invested some of his own money into both productions (he won't say how much). "I can't with a good conscience ask people to invest money into something I'm not willing to put my own money into," Falato says.

Ultimately, ZenDog's investors earned about 12 percent return on their investment in six months for Glengarry, according to Falato, and are earning even more for the open-ended run of Spring Awakening.

These days, Falato and Bandhu are back in the trenches looking for material. They attend about four workshops and readings a month, pore over scripts, and monitor the buzz on hot properties bubbling up from the half-dozen major theater festivals in New York every spring and summer.

"I'm looking for the producer's holy grail," says Falato. He says there are questions he asks himself when a project comes up: "Do any of those plays speak to me artistically, can their message be retold in this current time frame, and is it commercial enough to make back its investment?"

The other part of his job involves lots of deep breathing. "Every so often, I'll say, 'Oh my God, I don't have a salary!'" laughs Falato. "It seems glamorous from the outside, but it's really a very entrepreneurial way of life."

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