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William H. Goodspeed, an entrepreneur and steamboat operator who built the theater in 1876 to outdo a rival farther upstream, would have admired Price's flamboyance and his ambition. "When you come to the Goodspeed, you are not just buying a ticket to a play," Price says. "You are coming to experience the American musical theater. What ends up onstage is light—we hope—but it has meant many hours of looking at hundreds of pieces of sheet music and listening to almost every show that has ever been recorded. It is a very serious business we are involved in." —By Gerald Clarke