Goodspeed’s new leadership looks ahead
NEW LEADERSHIP LOOKS AHEAD TO POST-PANDEMIC THEATER
Assuming leadership of a nonprofit regional theater during a global plague might strike some as either hopelessly optimistic or valiantly self-dooming.
Yet Donna Lynn Hilton and David B. Byrd, Goodspeed Musicals’ newly appointed leadership partners, both see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, even as the COVID-19 pandemic sails into its second year of havoc.
“I’m thrilled and honored,” said Byrd, now Goodspeed’s managing director, who previously worked at Westport Country Playhouse, Yale Repertory Theatre and Yale School of Drama, where he earned his MFA. “Obviously, I’ve known of Goodspeed for a long time.”
“But also it’s this time,” said Byrd, who most recently served as managing director of Virginia Stage Company and, before that, the Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
“I think that’s been really striking for me that this is the right time to be here. Friends and colleagues in the field said, ‘Oh! Getting a job during a pandemic! That’s ... kind of ... remarkable!’”
Hilton, on the other hand, has worked at Goodspeed Musicals since 1988. Over the past 13 years, she has grown into a dynamic producer widely respected for possessing a nose for new works and a knack for nurturing musicals to fruition.
“I can’t say I had a home field advantage, despite having worked here a long time. They really did do their due diligence,” said Hilton, referring to the Goodspeed board of trustees. “I really had to work hard to get this job.”
Hilton’s signature accomplishment at Goodspeed — creating the Johnny Mercer Foundation Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals — would seem to make her a shoo-in for her appointment, but her hiring is by no means ordinary.
Since its debut in 1965, Goodspeed Opera House, as it was known for decades, thrived under the leadership of Michael Price and his successor, Michael Gennaro — each considered royalty in American musical theater circles and former Goodspeed executive directors.
Hilton and Byrd, on the other hand, are the first co-leaders for the Tony Award-winning regional theater. Hilton is a rarity in that she’s the artistic director of a prominent regional theater who is not a stage director (Jacob Padrón at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, is another).
Both Hilton and Byrd will share fundraising responsibilities while she leads the theater’s creative aspects and he focuses on administrative and financial matters.
“The conversation I found most valuable,” said Hilton, a stage manager by training, “was around someone who is not recognized as a classic director or a classic artist being put into an artistic director position.”
“I come at it as a curator of work,” she said in a Zoom chat that included Byrd. “I take that responsibility really seriously across the industry, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m well connected and I know many of the movers in our industry.
“I remain really proud to be the first woman in this position,” said Hilton, who served Goodspeed as producer for 13 years. “I’ve said in other interviews that Goodspeed may have always been led by men, but it has always been powered by women.
“I feel that I’m representing a lot of women who came before me . ... I feel I represent the voice that they didn’t always have.”
As Hilton and Byrd bask in their new leadership positions, they soberly recognize the daunting task at hand.
“The on-boarding of any executive is not entirely disparate from any other time, pandemic or not,” said Byrd, who, like Hilton, hails from North Carolina.
“A big part of my job now, as I’m viewing it, is doing what Donna Lynn and I have been doing for several weeks now: getting to know each other,” said Byrd.
“I really feel like, in a lot of ways, I’m on a listening tour. I’ve been meeting staff and getting to know the organization.”
Taking care of their people, Byrd said, is paramount.
“Not to be a Debbie Downer, but there are 175-plus artists who have not been able to collaborate with us in the same way as before,” said Byrd.
“How can we come back safely in a way that is smart and sustainable? We don’t have those answers right now. Living with that ambiguity is tough but necessary.”
Hilton agreed, adding that flexibility is going to be the word for 2021.
“We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we don’t know how long the tunnel is,” said Hilton. “We spent all 2020 catching everything thrown at us. Now I feel we’re on a straight path. We just don’t know how long it’ll take to recover. We have to remain flexible. We have to put a plan in place.”
“At the same time, it is our responsibility to be taking a holistic view of Goodspeed, to be thinking five years from, 10 years from now,” she said.
Hilton continues to nurture relationships with composers, lyricists, librettists, directors and designers so Goodspeed will be ready to resume developing new works when COVID-19 closes its long run.
“We’re not quite as active in new work development as we are in a normal situation, but we have continued to track and be involved in a very few projects that we were planning to produce or actively developing when the pandemic hit,” Hilton said.
Included on that short list is the exquisitely moving “Passing Through,” which, as producer, Hilton put on its feet in a developmental production at Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theatre the year before the pandemic shuttered theaters worldwide.
Despite the uncertainty of the immediate future, Byrd embraces hope for the future.
“I also think that musical theater will be a tonic for this pandemic,” he said. “Great art has been born out of really difficult times. I’m excited about what’s ahead.”
Hilton agreed with her new partner.
“I think that there is nothing that can elevate your spirit, or share a message, or lift your heart better than great musical theater,” she said. “We sing when the spoken word doesn’t do the job anymore.
“My message to our audience is hold on. Please don’t forget that we’re here. We’ll be back to lift your spirits as we always did.”