Goodspeed Opera House

Goodspeed Opera House (East Haddam, Connecticut). Built in 1876 by William H. Goodspeed to contain a local 400‐seat playhouse and offices for his mercantile endeavors, the Victorian Gothic wooden structure closed as a theatre in 1920. In 1959, shortly before it was slated to be demolished, conservationists organized the Goodspeed Opera House Foundation to restore and reactivate the auditorium, and it reopened in 1963. Since then the company has presented old and new musicals each season, usually with imagination and taste shown in the selection of offerings. Among the new musicals first tried out at the theatre are Man of La Mancha, Shenandoah, Something's Afoot, Harrigan 'n' Hart, and Annie. Similarly, a sense of theatrical history has been manifest in the choice of revivals, which have ranged as far back as Sousa's El Capitan. Sometimes these mountings have included substantial revisions of text and interpolation of songs not written for the shows in question, and some stagings have leaned towards a snickering style called “camp.” In the 1980s a second theatre, a two‐hundred‐seat space named for Norma Terris, a musical star of the 1920s and early 1930s, was opened for more intimate productions. Under the direction of Michael P. Price for most of its modern existence, the Goodspeed has sent a dozen musicals to Broadway. Also located nearby is the group's valuable library‐archives on the American musical theatre. The Goodspeed received special Tony Awards in 1980 and 1995.