Each year, thousands of actors, directors, choreographers, and technicians aspire to come to Goodspeed to practice their craft. We attract well-known icons of the theatre world and foster emerging talent among composers, lyricists, and librettists. We stand at the forefront of producing and preserving the American musical, simultaneously reinventing the classics and inventing new ones. Goodspeed mounts both new and newly revived musicals each year on our main stage at the Opera House and on our second stage in Chester – a total of more than 400 performances during the April to December season attracting 130,000 patrons to the Connecticut River Valley. Goodspeed stands as the first regional theatre in America to earn two special Tony Awards, one in 1980 for outstanding contributions to the American musical and a second in 1995 for distinguished achievement for a regional theatre. In our history, we have produced over 250 musicals, including over 70 world premieres, and exported 21 productions to Broadway. We were also intent on adding to the repertoire by discovering and nurturing promising new musicals presented at both the Opera House and the Norma Terris Theatre in neighboring Chester. At first, Goodspeed’s commitment was to discover rarely produced musicals from the repertoire, reworking them and bringing them to life. Under the direction of Michael Price from 1968 to 2014, Goodspeed transformed from a struggling entity into a non-profit arts organization with a mission.
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Goodspeed’s beginnings date back to 1963 when we opened our doors as a professional musical theatre in an historic building on the banks of the Connecticut River in East Haddam.