🔒Gennaro leads Goodspeed Musicals into new era

Michael Gennaro's first act as the new executive director of Goodspeed Musicals is off to a fast and relatively smooth start.

Gennaro, who took over the East Haddam nonprofit theater company on Feb. 6 following the retirement of longtime executive director Michael Price, has dealt with the loss of “The Honeymooners” show, which had been scheduled for this season before moving to Broadway, and booked “A Wonderful Life” as a replacement; filled the vacant general manager's position with a highly regarded manager from the Lincoln Center Theater in New York City; and played a role in adding two new board members.

“We made the right decision,” of hiring Gennaro, said John F. Wolter, president of Goodspeed's board of trustees and a lawyer at Updike, Kelly & Spellacy PC in Hartford. “I'm not going to say we've cloned Michael Price because [Gennaro] is his own person, but this transition has really gone the way we hoped it would.”

What Goodspeed gets in Gennaro is someone well versed in the industry from an early age. Gennaro's late father, Peter, choreographed the original Broadway production of “Annie” and “Annie II” at Goodspeed's Norma Terris Theatre, a smash hit that continues to spin off royalties for Goodspeed and for which he won a Tony Award for best choreography.

“People talk about growing up in a trunk going around on tours and on Broadway, and I literally was,” Gennaro said from his office in the iconic Goodspeed Opera House fronting the Connecticut River. “The earliest things I can remember are going to visit my father in a rehearsal room. Instead of going to the ballgame, I would go hang out with him in a theater. So this comes kind of second nature to me.”

Gennaro said he never envisioned being in theater, but hung with actors at the University of Notre Dame, pursued an acting career, appeared in the Broadway company of “Godspell,” which led to producing and the realization that he lacked a business background, for which he was urged to get an MBA or law degree. Nine years out of college, he went to Fordham University School of Law at night and worked as a lawyer for about seven years in New York, including representing entertainment clients.

“I went down that road for a while [in law], and I'm glad that at some point I realized I'm going to go back to why I did this in the first place,” he said of returning to theater.

Gennaro, 64, has run seven nonprofit arts organizations. He came to Goodspeed from the Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, where he was executive director since 2007. He also has led the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey and Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

Goodspeed, which has an annual budget of approximately $11 million and about 65 year-round employees, produces three musicals each season at the Goodspeed Opera House and develops new musicals at its Norma Terris Theatre in Chester. It also has The Scherer Library of Musical Theatre and The Max Showalter Center for Education in Musical Theatre.

Additionally, its JMF Writers Colony, in partnership with the Johnny Mercer Foundation, brings established and emerging writers and composers together for a month each year to create new musicals, providing a pipeline of shows that may be further developed in the Chester theater.

Building on Goodspeed's history of talent development is important to Gennaro, he said.

“Because this is such a destination spot, I want to try and develop more writers and composers and give them the ability to create new work — I think that's got to be our strength,” he said.

Audience development

He also hopes to develop more audience crossover between Goodspeed's two theaters: the Opera House, dedicated to refreshing and reviving musicals from their golden age, and Norma Terris, dedicated to new works. There's significant value in each constituency, he said.

Key, too, is attracting a new and younger audience — something theaters across the U.S. are trying to do.

“I feel that there's a core group that has supported this place for years and they're important to us,” Gennaro said. “The other theater [Norma Terris] allows us to find an entry point for developing a different audience.”

Paul Marte, communications manager for The Bushnell in Hartford, said entertainment venues in general are struggling to cultivate audiences because people's attention is so fragmented.

“It all comes down to programming — if you do things that younger people are interested in, they will jump at buying tickets and coming into your venue,” Marte said.

It's a balancing act of presenting shows appealing to a spectrum of tastes, he said.

“We have to know our audience and make sure we're giving them enough of what they want that they keep coming back,” Marte said.

Also today, many people, primarily those who are younger, are looking for something experiential, perhaps a party before the show, coming as a group and making an event out of what they're doing, he said.

“That's a big thing,” Marte said, noting that more entertainment venues and businesses in general are catering to “eventizing” things.

Gennaro also sees opportunity to broaden Goodspeed's geographic reach as a regional destination. Beyond the theaters, East Haddam and the surrounding region have a lot to offer, from restaurants and natural beauty to other theater venues.

He cited the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as an example. That event, in Ashland, Ore., has annual attendance of about 400,000, with people drawn for the shows and the small city's charm, restaurants, bed-and-breakfast inns and outdoor beauty.