Producers Christine Schwarzman and Megan O’Keefe have a wealth of knowledge to share. They are relatively new lead producers (making their lead debut in 2023) through the company No Guarantees, which Schwarzman founded in 2017 and O’Keefe joined in 2022. But, in a short time, they have invested in internal research that has seemingly benefited their shows and could create impact industry-wide. Schwarzman, founder and CEO, and O’Keefe, president and COO, embrace a data-driven approach to producing. But that doesn’t mean it’s without heart.
Schwarzman first fell in love with the theater as a patron. “My first true memorable theater experience, where my socks were knocked off, was ‘A Chorus Line,’” Schwarzman said. While working as a lawyer, she snagged a ticket on a rainy night to see the original cast of the original production. “I never thought I’d ever be in theater or be a theater producer.”
Before working as an attorney, Schwarzman noted she was a field producer and writer for ABC News. She earned her law degree from New York University and, upon entering the workforce, specialized in intellectual property (IP). She later founded IP Network, a software company that managed and commercialized IP, and led as its CEO for two years before closing the business. But her expertise serves her to this day. “I can spot a [IP] problem a mile away,” Schwarzman said. But she first became involved with theatrical producing because of 9/11.
Schwarzman had been in New York City on that day and lost a close family member in the terrorist attack. “I always wanted to be involved with trying to tell a little bit of that story in some way,” Schwarzman explained. Her friends knew this and pointed her in the direction of Junkyard Dog Productions’ Sue Frost, who was producing “Come From Away.” That Tony Award-nominated musical, about 38 planes that were grounded in Canada on 9/11, was Schwarzman’s first Broadway investment, through No Guarantees. She learned from that experience and continued investing and co-producing.
Megan O’Keefe came on board five years later. She had also started out as a lawyer, earning her J.D. from Columbia University and hoping to work in entertainment and copyright law. “My dad clipped out [a newspaper story] for me about ‘Love! Valour! Compassion!,’” O’Keefe recalled. “Joe Mantello [who directed the Broadway premiere] went to see a regional production, and they had totally used his blocking, his opening. For the first time, people were like, ’Can you copyright staging?’And I was like, ’That’s interesting. Maybe I’ll go to law school.’”
But after practicing for a few years, the law wasn’t as exciting as O’Keefe had hoped. But her passion for the theater, nurtured through years of performing as a child and through high school, held strong. O’Keefe became the general manager of Broadway Roulette, a ticketing platform to book surprise Broadway shows for flat rate. When Broadway Roulette was bought, her friend Darren Johnston — then an employee at No Guarantees — reached out. Johnston and O’Keefe had been assistants at the Public Theater together — Johnston for artistic director Oskar Eustis and O’Keefe for production executive Ruth Sternberg. Johnston and Schwarzman were looking for a mind like O’Keefe to work on ancillary projects.
“Christine’s approach was to solve problems,” O’Keefe noted. “The more problems you encountered on one show, the more we’ve been like, ‘Well, this is an industry problem. How do we solve this in a bigger picture way?’”
That philosophy endures today. Problem-solving is always on their slate. Of course, No Guarantees has invested in or co-produced 43 Broadway shows, including the Tony-winning “Hadestown,” “Stereophonic” and “Merrily We Roll Along.” They have lead-produced four Main Stem shows: “Bad Cinderella,” “Fat Ham,” “The Hills of California” and the 2026 Tony winner for Best Musical, “Schmigadoon!” In the 2026-2027 season they are also co-producers or investors in “Galileo,” “Paddington” and “Inter Alia.”
Here, Schwarzman and O’Keefe dive deep into their approach to producing “Schmigadoon!,” commitment to data, thoughts on celebrity casting and the latest on their roster of upcoming projects.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Broadway News: Let’s begin with your foundation. What makes a No Guarantees show?
Christine Schwarzman: If it comes to investing, my decision is always let’s try not to lose money, but you have no control over that. That’s one of the reasons to become lead producer because you do have control over what’s spent and how. What makes me, frankly, interested in investing in something: a) It has to be entertaining to me. Now, entertaining can mean a lot of things. It doesn’t have to make me laugh, but it has to be compelling in some way. We love plays here.
Like “The Hills of California.”
Schwarzman: That was a big leap and a leap of love. I knew we were going to lose money on that. Everybody knew we were going to lose money on that. It was a piece of art. We knew it was just going to be so expensive. And it was, but I don’t regret that at all because it was beautiful and I still love that show. I would’ve loved them to call it something else. I have a thing about titles. But Jez Butterworth was not going to change that. So I decided to do it anyway. But there’s no one defining criterion. It has to be something that I think is really worthy — that other people will appreciate.
Megan O’Keefe: You spend a lot of time with a show when you’re lead producing it. Sometimes that’s when we instead invest or co-produce, when we say, “We like this. We want this show to happen, but do we want to be at every first preview of this show, of this language, spending that much time with it?”
Schwarzman: So many meetings.
O’Keefe: You have to obsess over it. Something we talk about a lot — certainly with a show like “Hills” we were not expecting it to be necessarily commercially gangbusters, but we knew who it was for. I don’t think we’ve ever taken on a show as a lead producer where we didn’t know exactly who would be served by [the show] and who would want to come in and see it.
Schwarzman: Also, whoever’s involved in the show. I was a huge Jez Butterworth fan. And Sam [Mendes]. The fantastic opportunity to work with somebody you’ve always really admired — that’s always a factor. Or the chance of working with other producers that we know and like because they’re reliable, good decision-makers. We like to be that reliable person and work with reliable partners.
O’Keefe: A lot of people, because of their capacity and in every definition of the word, move from investing to co-producing to lead-producing. We still do all three. Last year, we were across 35% of the season in some way, shape or form. If you go to a Broadway show, we probably benefit from that in some capacity. But the other thing that that has meant is I know how I like to be treated as an investor, as a co-producer on behalf of No Guarantees.
Would you say that diversifying the portfolio — by still investing and co-producing — allows you the financial bandwidth to take on more of what you want when you lead produce?
