Patrick Catullo, a 31-year-old producer who helped bring The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to Broadway, says he sees as many N.Y.M.F. shows as he can—and the economic turmoil won't short-circuit that. "I still want to know what choices are out there," he says. But "you have to make safer choices. You may be less inclined to take a risk on something that's obscure or bizarre, on things that might not appeal to a large group of people."

In 2005, he picked up a rock opera from N.Y.M.F. called Feeling Electric, about a mentally ill suburban woman. Reworked and titled Next to Normal, it played New York's Second Stage Theatre and is headed to the Arena Stage in Arlington, Virginia, in November, with Rent director Michael Greif at the helm.

At the musical theater festival, "there are going to be shows that aren't my taste, but that doesn't mean they're not commercial," Catullo says. "There may be shows that aren't quite there yet, but the writers are people worth knowing."

Not every encounter is a revelation. After sitting through Paul Leschen and Fred Sauter's Bedbugs!!!, featuring bedbugs transformed into six-foot-tall monsters by an extermination gone wrong, Catullo declares the material "not promising."

"Even if you're going to do a sci-fi comedy rock musical," he says, "you have to care on some level about the characters."  

When Davenport finds a work he likes, he calls the producer or the creative team to discuss their plans for the piece. "I often find it's very much like a first date, and you decide if you're both looking for the same thing," he says. "One may be out for marriage; one may be out for sleeping around." He is the marrying kind, preferring to take an active role in a musical's development rather than simply write a check.

When he talks to investors, Davenport, who blogs about his work, cautions that investing in theater is "high risk," but offers "enormous potential return." 

"Unlike a stock, when you buy into a show, you don't have to decide to sell it," he says. "Those shows pay dividends for years and years. The other thing is, you get perks. If you buy 100 shares of Coca-Cola, do they ever send you a free six-pack? If you buy 100 shares of Pfizer, they don't send you free drugs. Buy a small share even of a Broadway show, you'll get opening-night tickets, you'll get invitations to parties, networking opportunities…and you get to walk around Times Square and point at your marquee and say, 'I'm an investor in that.'"