This Newton native has made her mark on Broadway

Candy Gold does a lot of work on Broadway, but on a recent afternoon, she’s home in Massachusetts. “Why would these big shots want to work with me?,” she said on the phone.

Gold, a lifelong Newton resident, has made her mark in the theater world behind the scenes as a co-producer. She was nominated for six Tony Awards and won two, the first for “Hadestown” in 2019 and then five years later for “Stereophonic,” the most Tony-nominated play ever. The latter makes its Boston debut at the Emerson Colonial Theater March 10-15.

The show is about a group of 1970s-era Los Angeles rock musicians in the studio — working, squabbling, doing drugs, finding ecstatic highs and crushing lows. A situation, it has been said, not unlike when Fleetwood Mac recorded “Rumours.”

Gold does have an answer to the rhetorical query, and she’s eager to give credit where it’s due. “Thank you, Dana Hall School in Wellesley,” she said. “That set me up for being an amazing researcher.” In her work today, she said Broadway producers will say, “Let Candy read the script. Let Candy find the loopholes in this. Let Candy put her eyes on the project. Let Candy do a background check on every actor, find out what they’re doing.”

Gold’s extensive work in theater includes the music-centric “Jagged Little Pill,” “Tommy: The Musical,” “Eclipsed,” “Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & the Pool” and “The Glass Menagerie.” Aside from co-producing, she’s invested in 37 other plays, including some in London.

Gold, 68, has worked on Broadway productions for the past 15 years. Her path very much came about through her experience in Boston, both in the news media — TV, radio and print — and in the theater world. She was on the board at the American Repertory Theater for eight years, and then served on the board of trustees at the Wang Center for 20 years. There, she met two women, Spring Sirkin and Peg McFeeley Golden, who were producers and helped her get her foot in the door.

Sirkin was working on a revival of “Driving Miss Daisy” with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave and invited Gold to her office to go through “the process and paperwork of what it would be like to be an investor.”

“I remember going to that first opening night and feeling the electricity in the room,” Gold said. “And those actors delivering those performances really made me value and appreciate the world of creating theatrical art.”

To the outside world, a co-producer’s job may seem nebulous.

“In our business, the people at the top are called the lead producers,” Gold said. “Either somebody comes to them with the project or they go out and find the project — they’ll find a writer and say ‘We’ve got this book, we want to make it into a play.’ They’ll find the director. One of the lead producer’s jobs is they will go out and get a team together of co-producers and that’s where we come in.”

Raising money for the project is certainly a big part of the job. “We go out and get investors,” she said. “But I like to say that a co-producer has a seat at the table. We will go in there and talk on the Zoom about advertising campaigns, how we are spending our money. PR, marketing and advertising all have their roles to play.”

As a co-producer, Gold said she doesn’t have a say in casting, but if she goes to a preview and spots something she thinks is off, she can speak up. “I have the good fortune of being able to say that I did change dialogue on certain shows, that my little words that came out of my little head are on that stage,” she said. “From somebody who likes to consider herself a writer, that’s very complimentary.”

“Stereophonic” began its off-Broadway run at the Playwrights Horizon in October 2023. Gold came to the project in December. She was having Thanksgiving dinner on Martha’s Vineyard with a friend, Tony Award-winning producer Ashley Melone, and asked her, “What have you seen off-Broadway that I should go to see?”

Melone raved about something new called “Stereophonic,” causing Gold to say, “Stereo-wha?” Melone, who was the lead producer, told her it was like a Fleetwood Mac story, which is to say, tumultuous. Gold jumped in, joined the team, and in a quick turnaround, the play debuted on Broadway in March the following year.

“We knew we had something special,” said Gold. “I always refer to ‘Stereophonic’ as being like ‘Hamlet.’ You’re watching intimate conversations that happen in real time in a recording studio. There’s the back-and-forth that takes an ensemble to work. You’re getting to know these characters so well and see when the music is made or not made, or craziness occurs or affairs occur or drug problems occur. You understand the roots of why those problems are happening.”

Gold was pleased, but not shocked, by the 13 Tony nominations and five wins. “Like in movies, there’s a lead-up,” she said. “They have the SAG Awards and the Golden Globes. We have the Drama League and the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards that lead up to the Tonys. We won those. At that point, we felt pretty good; we had really good reviews. And even though it’s a three-hour play, people are coming to see it because they love that authenticity.”

Now, the show is touring and stops near Gold’s hometown.

“The best part for me is all my friends and family can see it,” Gold said. “Not every show is afforded the opportunity to tour, so it’s great when that happens and even better when the scheduling works out.”