Stephen Siderow discovered early that his future didn’t lie onstage. After one lead role in high school and a disappointing acting class in college, Siderow abandoned the footlights for a backstage role. Since 2007 the co-founder and managing partner of $22 billion, credit-focused hedge fund firm BlueMountain Capital Management has served on the board of Ars Nova, a nonprofit theater company in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen that recently shot into the limelight for its early backing of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man behind Hamilton, the hit Broadway musical about U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton.

Based on the biography of Hamilton by Ron Chernow, the show chronicles the life and trials of the man who was an aide to General George Washington, an author of The Federalist Papers extolling the U.S. Constitution and the country’s first Treasury secretary. Hamilton has gotten rave reviews for its music and dancing as well as Manuel’s unique lyricism and the multicultural cast of founding fathers.

“It really did bring together so many different elements in a distinctive new way to create something no one had ever seen before,” Siderow says. “There are elements of rap and hip-hop music alongside dense language and complex characters that give the work a Shakespearean arc.”

The strategy of fitting disparate ideas together for a risky but profitable endeavor is familiar to Siderow. He says New York–based BlueMountain, which he co-founded in 2003 after stints as a corporate attorney at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York and a financial services consultant at McKinsey & Co.’s New York office, operates similarly.

“BlueMountain’s investment philosophy and process is very much non-siloed and collaborative,” Siderow explains. “We hire and integrate people from different backgrounds and with different skill sets into a coherent team. I like to think that our investment and business model taps into the same genre-busting creative impulse that animates Ars Nova — we find exciting new opportunities by breaking down boundaries and recombining different traditional approaches.”

Siderow says that some of the same qualities that drew him to Ars Nova — opportunities for entrepreneurship, creativity and communication — are evident in his work at BlueMountain, particularly when it comes to interacting with clients.

Siderow, 48, grew up going to the theater on and off Broadway but never thought about performing himself until a friend who was producing the senior play at his high school in the New York suburb of Chappaqua asked him to try out. Siderow agreed, assuming he’d end up on the chorus line. Instead, he was cast in a lead role in the production of Best Foot Forward.

The experience encouraged Siderow to take an acting class while studying for his bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Amherst College, but things went south quickly and he earned a B–, his worst grade ever: “I was quite discouraged, but I still loved the theater and went to see lots of productions.”

When he moved to New York after earning a JD from Harvard Law School, Siderow became more involved in the city’s arts scene, subscribing to several theater companies and joining the board of the Civilians theater company. But it was on a trip to Israel in 2007 that he met Jenny and Jon Steingart, who had founded Ars Nova in 2002.

“Stephen’s support goes far beyond the financial investment he’s willing to make to support Ars Nova,” says Jason Eagan, the group’s artistic director. “He has completely invested his heart into what we do here, really getting behind the projects and the artists, showing up from the very first reading of something all the way through to opening night.”

Siderow says he enjoyed Hamilton and is excited about Miranda’s success; now he’s looking forward to seeing Ars Nova’s next act.