Stepping her way to Broadway

When Louise Beard hears music, she sees steps.

Her ears led her to direct music, her eyes and feet enabled her to choreograph tap dances for decades, and now her combined passion for the arts has brought her the 9-inch trophy that sits on the mantel of her living room.

As a producer for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Beard won a coveted Tony Award this summer — and a chance to place a plastic pink pig, her signature “calling card,” in Hugh Jackman’s palm. Surrounded by movie and theater stars in Radio City Music Hall that evening, Jackman laughed as she explained that he had been blessed with good luck, because in the old days in Germany, if you had a pig you had something to eat.

Beard said the act makes people remember her and reminds her of how her dad would draw pigs for her and her younger twin sisters as children. Today, she runs a production company, Swine Stars, and decorates her home with a tasteful smattering of pig statues and figurines.

These days she visits New York about 10 times a year, watching Broadway for the most clever, people-pleasing musicals and then supporting them with her show business savvy.

A start at tap 

Beard’s career started not in theater but in music. She majored in it at Birmingham-Southern College and then served as the assistant music director at Independent Presbyterian Church for seven years.

A couple of years after her first child was born in 1977, she saw a tap number at Birmingham Festival Theatre and thought, “I have to learn how to do that.”

She recruited a friend to teach her how to do just that. That led her to choreograph a tap number for the Junior League Follies, which led to a friend, Lee Whatley, suggesting the two of them open a dance school together.

For nearly three decades, Beard taught adults at Time Step Studios, which was located in Crestline Village for much of its life. Each year, Beard choreographed a dance school show for 100 to 150 adults at the Alabama Theatre. 

By 2008, Beard knew her knees couldn’t continue with teaching dance. She and Whatley closed the school in 2009.

With that, Beard had an idea for a new venture doing what she loved, and what she loved was good theater.

Theater work

When her daughter Lanford turned 13, Beard started taking her on long weekend trips to New York every Christmas. On every trip, they would see at least six musicals.Wherever Beard went in the years to come, if she could, she would see a show.

In 2009, Beard started traveling to New York City, where Lanford now lives, to see more shows, taking note of the dance steps she saw. She bought sound tracks from musicals, paid close attention to dancing conventions and started to get to know people in the theater business.

As a producer today, Beard’s primary role is to recruit investors for the production. She also attends the show openings and meetings for marketing and advertising when she is in New York. 

“Producing is something you do because you love the thrill of it, but you sign something saying that if you do not get your money back, you will be okay with it,” she said. “As they say, there’s no business like show business.”

Amongst all the business, though, it’s being involved in the arts that excites her.

Winning productions

By 2011, Beard attended her first Tony Awards show for The Scottsboro Boys, which was nominated for 12 Tony Awards.

This year was the first that she came home with an award herself, accepting it with her production group, Four Ladies and One Gent, and around 25 other producers of the show.

 A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder was nominated for 10 Tony Awards this year and brought home four: Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Costume Design of a Musical and Best Book of a Musical. After the Tony nominations came out in April, Beard said the money for the show tripled.

In the show, Jefferson Mays plays the role of eight characters who are victims of a man who discovers he is ninth in line to inherit a sum of money. All 14 actors played multiple parts, so it felt as if there were more like 40 on the roll.

Beard hit the apex of musical theater at the Tonys this year, but she still intends to remain in the middle of Broadway business. This summer she has been attending rehearsals for Dames at Sea, a show she is producing that should be eligible for the Tonys next year, and she has fronted money for a new production of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

“It’s part of a community I really like to be around,” she said. “It invigorates me.”