WHO’S WHO

American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Johnny Mercer Foundation, the ASCAP Foundation, and numerous charitable and non-profit organizations. He received his BA from Michigan State University, MA from Minnesota, MFA from Yale, and holds honorary doctorates from Wesleyan University, Connecticut College, and The University of Hartford. He is married to Jo-Ann Nevas Price; they are the proud grandparents of Ezra and Ari.

DAVID B. BYRD (Managing Director) [he/him] was named Goodspeed Musicals’ first Managing Director in early 2021 and has held leadership positions at Connecticut’s Yale Repertory Theater, Westport Country Playhouse, and the Dwight/Edgewood Project in New Haven. With a career in the professional regional theatre spanning 20 years, he previously served as the Managing Director of Virginia Stage Company, Southeastern Virginia’s largest producing theatre. David has a passion for placemaking, thoughtful community engagement, arts advocacy and coalition-building. His commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity and access is steadfast, with appointments to anti-racism working groups and other related posts in academia and the non-profit sector.

Prior to his work in Norfolk, David was Managing Director of the Clarence Brown Theatre (CBT) at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where he also served as Adjunct Professor in the UT-Knoxville Department of Theatre. David has served on the McClung Museum Academic Programs Advisory Board and the Great Schools Partnership Advisory Council, in addition to grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, Virginia Commission for the Arts and the United Way.

In addition to participating in union negotiations with the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), David has guest lectured at Greensboro College, UNC-Greensboro, Virginia Wesleyan University, Christopher Newport University, Skidmore College and Texas Tech, among others. He received an MFA degree in Theater Management from Yale University School of Drama and a BA degree in Drama from UNC-Greensboro in his native North Carolina. David and his husband Jeff reside in nearby Portland, CT and enjoy hiking throughout the gorgeous CT woods when not taking in a live performance.

DONNA LYNN HILTON (Artistic Director) [she/ her] is a highly-effective creative producer with a significant record of leading, developing and producing new musical theatre works as well as inspiring a re-envisioning of the classic musical theater canon. She has led the creation of many of Goodspeed’s most successful productions of the last 15 years, including the 2014 World Premiere of Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn, developed with Universal Theatrical Group. She inspired the creation of Goodspeed’s critically acclaimed 2012 production of Show Boat which was subsequently licensed by Rodgers and Hammerstein and has been produced across the US and in the West End. Donna Lynn brought to Goodspeed the new musicals Because of Winn Dixie, Chasing Rainbows, Amazing Grace and Anne of Green Gables. At The Terris Theatre, she led the development of many new musicals to successful production, among them The Circus In Winter, Passing Through, Band Geeks! and A Sign of the Times. With the development of Hi, My Name is Ben, she led Goodspeed’s first collaboration with a resident theatre outside the US—Scotland’s Dundee Rep Theatre. Donna Lynn led the creation of the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed, the partnership with the Johnny Mercer Foundation which welcomes nearly 50 musical theatre composers, lyricists and librettists to Goodspeed’s campus each winter and has become one of the premiere development opportunities available to emerging musical theatre writers. She led an expansion of Goodspeed’s Festival of New Musicals and through the Festival brought to Goodspeed the first US development of the now international hit Come From Away. Donna Lynn is a past-president of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. She currently serves as a Trustee of Dundee Rep Theatre/Scottish Dance Ensemble in Dundee, Scotland and on the Advisory Panel for the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat. Donna Lynn began her career as a stage manager of Musical Theatre and Opera and remains a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association. She and her husband, Sound Designer Jay Hilton, make their home in Hadlyme with Cookie and Macy.

ARTHUR LAURENTS (Book) (1917-2011) was the author of musical plays such as West Side Story, Gypsy, Anyone Can Whistle, Do I Hear A Waltz?, Hallelujah Baby! (1967 Tony Award For Best Musical) and Nick & Nora; and the screenplays The Snake Pit, Rope, Caught, Anastasia, Bonjour Tristesse, The Way We Were, and The Turning Point (Golden Globe Award, Screenwriters Guild Award, Writers Guild of America Award, National Board of Review Best Picture Award). The last two screenplays were novels as well. His plays included Claudia Lazlo, Home Of The Brave, The Time Of The Cuckoo, A Clearing In The Woods, Invitation To The March, The Enclave, Scream, Two Lives, The Radical Mystique, My Good Name, and Jolson Sings Again

Laurents also directed plays and musicals for the theatre, among them I Can Get It For You Wholesale, Invitation To A March, Anyone Can Whistle, The Enclave, The Madwoman Of Central Park West, Birds Of Paradise, three revivals of Gypsy (with Angela Lansbury in 1974, with Tyne Daly in 1989, with Patti LuPone in 2007), La Cage aux Folles (1984 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical, 1985 Sydney Drama Critics Award for Directing) and the 2009 Broadway revival of West Side Story