Spartan Profiles: Michael P. Price

GOODSPEED MUSICALS

            Lovers of Broadway musicals love Goodspeed Musicals, a Connecticut-based group that has been advancing musical theater for decades.  Every year Goodspeed produces six musicals at its venues in East Haddam and Chester, and 17 of them have later reached Broadway.  Goodspeed has won two special Tony Awards, and now, beginning with Julie Andrews’ rediscovery of The Boy Friend, which opened at MSU on Nov. 8, Goodspeed will send one musical every year to the Wharton Center.

            This arrangement has special meaning for Michael P. Price, ’60, executive director of Goodspeed since 1968.  “This has given me great joy,” says Price of the MSU partnership.  “I had so much fun returning to campus.  Has this place ever changed!  I remember living in Shaw Hall and walking across the frozen Red Cedar to the Auditorium. I remember carving beef on Saturday afternoons at the football press box.” The highlight of his campus visit, however, was reuniting with his former theater professor Frank Rutledge, now the department chair.  “Spectacular,” he says of their meeting.  “I enjoyed talking to his students, and I want to thank (Wharton Center executive director) Michael Brand for inviting the students to see The Boy Friend.”  

            A native of Chicago, Mike chose MSU “because it had a great reputation in broadcasting and had some wonderful professors.”  But after meeting Rutledge, his passion turned to theater—a passion that continues to burn.  “There’s a real excitement to all of this,” he explains.  “The challenges and the thrills are never the same and they come when you least expect them.” 

            He loved working with Julie Andrews.  “That was extraordinarily exciting for us,” he says.  “We relished every moment with this great star.  She is a wonderful human being.”