7-Figure Deficits, Pandemic Pose Pickle For New Goodspeed Leadership

For decades, Goodspeed Musicals’ multimillion-dollar endowment had allowed its theaters in East Haddam and Chester to survive and flourish, despite downturns in the economy, declines in both contributions and attendance and annual deficits, some in the seven figures.

But annual royalties that go into the endowment from the smash 1970s musical “Annie” — which had its premiere at Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam 45 years ago — as well as from other shows the theater launched, have been diminishing over the years. That makes Goodspeed’s recent string of deficits — totaling nearly $4 million over a three-year period ending in fiscal 2018, according to its most recently available public tax filings — a critical issue facing the new leadership team taking over this spring.

In an effort to deal more effectively with growing financial pressures, which were exacerbated by the pandemic, Goodspeed’s trustees nixed the single executive director model that was established when Michael Price took over the newly renovated theater in the late 1960s. This singular “impresario” role continued when Michael Gennaro succeeded Price in 2015.

With Gennaro’s retirement last year, the board decided to split the leadership with one person focused on the creative side of the business and another on finances, assisted by a proactive money-management team from Goodspeed’s banking partners and accounting firm blumshapiro, says John F. Wolter, chairman of the board of trustees and a lawyer at Hartford law firm Updike, Kelly & Spellacy P.C.

In January, David B. Byrd was named the new managing director in charge of the business side of the organization. The 41-year-old was previously managing director of Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk, Virginia. A Yale School of Drama grad, Byrd was also an associate managing director at Yale Repertory Theatre and director of marketing at Westport Country Playhouse.

Donna Lynn Hilton, 59, is Goodspeed’s new artistic director. She began her career at Goodspeed in 1988 as a stage manager and has been a producer for the last 13 years. She has led the expansion of the Festival of New Musicals annual weekend, and the creation of the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove, a writing retreat for musical theater artists.

Byrd will oversee a budget that stood at approximately $12 million pre-pandemic.

The theater said it took a $5 million financial hit as a result of forced closures from COVID-19.

In a typical year about half of Goodspeed’s revenues come from ticket sales; other income…CONTINUED