Ken Davenport

Check for the "Spring Awakening Kickstarter" thread, and then go to Google and find out what happened to the website that became "Did He Like It."

I've heard other things, of course, but I can't cite them as anything other than hearsay.

That would hardly be the only problem with Godspell, but I exhausted myself so often and so loudly on that subject I had to start a new account to get away from it. The short version is that no matter how much he tries to sell himself as a 21st century innovator, he's only one serious misstep away from becoming the next Adela Holzer.

Updated On: 7/29/18 at 06:16 PM

The only thing he has produced that has been of any remote quality was Spring Awakening. I have found all of his other productions to be gimmick filled and self indulgent. I am not a fan of him or the work he produces.

One time, he punched me in the face. It was awesome.

I just have to ask - the curiosity is killing me - why do you care?

I don't find him as objectionable as many. Most of the criticism seems to come down to the fact that he's gimmicky and/or tryhard in how he's promoting his shows. And, yep. He is. He does a lot of tricks/gimmicks to generate press and he's not nearly as good as other producers in ensuring his hand is hidden. (Hamilton is marketed just as ruthlessly/manipulatively, they're just a lot better at looking classy and hiding it)

Which... doesn't seem like a great reason to condemn someone honestly. We can roll our eyes a bit, say "of course Davenport would do something like this", but it doesn't make him a bad guy.

He also makes a lot of producing info available in a way other big-name producers don't, and funds a lot of shows that have a lot of value artistically, even if they're not commercial successes. For every Getting The Band Back Together there's Deaf West Spring Awakening.

So, in short, he may not be a great producer - a decent amount of his decisions backfire (And some more backfire longterm in a reputation for not being classy), he's got a terrible track record for commercial success, and he's gimmicky. However, looking at the projects he funds, I have to say I'm glad he's out there funding them. In a time when we are increasingly ruled by the latest disney musical or adaption of a 90s movie, he's giving us a breath of fresh air.

The Spring Awakening Kickstarter is really the worst offense. The original thread is here: Official Kickstarter to get Spring Awakening to perform on the Tonys

The tl;dr version is that just before the Tonys, a Kickstarter was created- ostensibly by Deaf West- in order to fund their Tony performance, with a cutoff date the night before the awards, with the implication that without the funding, the performance could not happen. Davenport took to his blog to champion it, and say that although he believed in the show, it was not financially responsible to fund its performance. This was all pretty much immediately called out as shady- there's a lot of prep and planning required for a Tony performance. Moreover, the donations were being called tax deductible, despite the production being a commercial venture. Davenport went so far as to delete blog posts he had written that criticized crowdsourcing once they were brought up here. The final nail in the coffin was that the Spring Awakening performance was formally announced by the Tonys well before the Kickstarter was funded- and then, they received numerous very large donations that closed the gap. It was all a publicity stunt to essentially pay back Davenport + et al for the performance, essentially, using Deaf West as a credible front.

The thing that bugs me about Deaf West kickstarter is that if he'd been honest, I feel like he's still get a lot of support. If he'd said, "look, we're performing at the tonys because we want it preserved and we feel strongly about getting the message out there. However, it's very expensive to do so, especially if we don't get anything commercial out of it, and we're looking for donations to defray some of the costs." Insert some feel-good stuff about how wonderful the community is and how he knows they'll support the production in this.

I've seen fans rally behind much stupider stuff. You may not get quite as many donations, but I feel like you'd get most, and you keep your integrity.



But again, it comes back to my point. Davenport is manipulative. ALL producers are. Davenport is just bad at hiding it.

Updated On: 7/30/18 at 10:25 AM

@Rainah, as someone who has been around a long time, what he does is not what "other producers" do. You can believe that if you want, but the one thing you can't believe other producers do is fail consistently. Or (ironically) also have the temerity to charge people to "teach" them how to produce. One can drink the Merrick kool-aid if one wants, but Merrick was a successful producer. It's kinda what producing is all about, no? If you want to produce things without fretting over commercial success, start a non-profit. (Wouldn't surprise me if he tries that too.)

Ken is a textbook example of someone who was born on third base (he's a trust fund baby) and thinks he hit a triple.

Another example --- he runs a service where he charges unsuspecting writers to "professionally review and evaluate" their scripts --- and then passes the work off to his unpaid interns and minimum wage office "slaves".

The funniest part is that he honestly believes that all of his producing "innovations" are groundbreaking ideas that will change the world --- when in actuality they're all just old half-baked ideas that no one has ever implemented because they make no business sense whatsoever.

Not to mention, anyone notice Afterglow isn't on Did He Like It?

Davenport didn't produce Afterglow. He just owns the venue.