A curtain call used to feel like the beginning of the end. Now, sometimes, it is only the beginning of a show’s second life. More and more, Broadway and UK productions are being filmed for movie theatres, creating a world where, suddenly, a production that once belonged to one particular stage can find an audience somewhere else. As a theatre junkie and critic, I find that possibility slightly unsettling at first, because theatre has always felt so tied to the live experience. But when I step back, it feels enormously exciting.

The National Theatre Live model has been doing this successfully for years, allowing productions from London, including the National Theatre, Almeida, and the West End, to reach audiences far beyond London. It has created its own kind of theatrical afterlife, where a production can close in one city and continue appearing at home for screenings or in cinemas elsewhere. Now Broadway is becoming part of that conversation in a very big way, with filmed stage productions finding their way into movie theatres across the country and beyond. And I love the idea of it.

Not because a filmed production replaces sitting in the theatre. It doesn’t. There is something about being in the room, surrounded by an audience experiencing a performance at exactly the same moment, that belongs specifically to live theatre. But a filmed version can preserve something that would otherwise exist only in memory. It can give a production another audience. It can give someone who never had the opportunity to see it live a chance to discover it in towns and cities far and wide. And, perhaps most excitingly, it can allow those of us who loved a show a chance to see it again.

The filmed live capture of Hadestown is already showing just how exciting this new theatrical afterlife can be. After exceeding expectations at the box office, the film has now grossed $18.2 million domestically after its second week in movie theatres. Its opening weekend brought in $10.2 million, edging past the opening weekend of the filmed Hamilton stage production, which grossed $10.1 million in 2025. The producers of Hadestown originally announced a five-night theatrical release, but demand, including repeat viewings, has prompted an extension that will keep the film in movie theatres indefinitely.

Repeat viewings, that might be my favourite part of this whole development. Theatre is usually so wonderfully, frustratingly ephemeral. You see it, you absorb it, you talk about it, and then you wait for the next show, hoping the next experience will be just as wonderful, or even better. A filmed version changes that relationship. Suddenly a production can become something you can return to, again and again. Ad infinitum.

Hadestown: The Musical was filmed during three performances at London’s Lyric Theatre, with Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, André De Shields, Amber Gray and Patrick Page returning to their roles. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival before its North American theatrical release on July 24. And the rest is theatrical history, as they say. I must admit that I love that a production that once lived inside a London theatre can now be experienced by audiences sitting in movie theatres across North America and beyond. And Hadestown, it seems, is only the beginning.

Six the Musical Live! arrived in movie theatres on August 14, captured live at London’s Vaudeville Theatre with the original London Six Queens. The idea of seeing this infectious musical on a cinema screen has me particularly intrigued because this is where my imagination starts running away with the possibilities.

I have this fantasy. It is about what a filmed Six could become. And something I have been fantasizing about for years, ever since seeing it on the Broadway stage, imagining a filmed version where each of those glorious numbers could become its own fully staged music video. I see the Queens in full-period costume, castles, English countryside, elaborate locations, intense choreography, sharp storytelling, and enormous cinematic images. Give me a little ‘Bridgerton‘ mixed with a fully formed Madonna or Lady Gaga music video. Keep the wit, the pop concert energy, the history, and the theatricality, but let the camera take the Queens somewhere the stage cannot. That is my dream Six movie project. Please, I beg you, someone develop that project too. Because I’ll be there. But, for now, I will happily take the live capture.

John Lithgow in Broadway’s Giant. Photo by Joan Marcus.

But in the real world, the filmed-theatre list is getting wonderfully crowded. There is also Giant, the four-time Tony-nominated and Olivier Award-winning play starring John Lithgow, which was filmed during its London premiere with the principal cast that just closed on Broadway. Fallen Angels, starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara, was also filmed live for distribution when it was at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre during its Broadway run. Both are heading to cinemas worldwide.

The list continues to grow, albeit in different directions and different ways. Lin-Manuel Miranda is directing a film adaptation of Dave Malloy’s Octet, with a remarkable cast that includes Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Zegler, and Jonathan Groff. Richard Linklater’s Merrily We Roll Along continues its extraordinary 20-year filming process, while Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is also moving toward the screen, as Denzel Washington and Todd Black continue their project of bringing August Wilson’s plays to film.

And there are more projects announced for the future, including Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Girl From the North Country, Guys and Dolls, Gypsy, Oliver!, Once on This Island and Sunset Boulevard. What form some of these projects will ultimately take remains to be seen, but the sheer number of titles suggests that this experiment in bringing theatre to screens is not slowing down.

Then there are the productions that have already been filmed and may eventually reach cinemas from places I could never have reached during their original engagements. I am particularly intrigued by the possibility of seeing Josh O’Connor in Golden Boy, filmed at London’s Almeida. That was a production I was genuinely sad to miss, and knowing that a filmed version exists gives the show another possibility beyond the theatre where it originally played. And now there is The Misanthrope, the National Theatre’s production starring Sandra Oh, which is the latest filmed capture and one I am particularly thrilled to get the chance to see. Suddenly, these aren’t just productions I wish I had been able to catch in London. They are productions I may actually get another chance to experience in all their theatrical glory.

This makes me reminisce about the productions I have already been lucky enough to see in London. I would happily sit down and rewatch the fabulous production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which I saw with friends during my May London Theatre Adventure at the National Theatre starring the powerhouse Lesley Manville. Not to mention the equally fabulous The Importance of Being Earnest that I saw in the West End last January. Years ago, because of NTLive, I was able to see the West End version of Angels in America at BAM Cinema before it transferred to Broadway, and what a treat that was. The pleasure of knowing that a production can be captured and preserved means that something I experienced once, in that particular room and at that particular moment, might someday be something I can experience twice, or even thrice, if I so desired.

It can begin in a rehearsal room, move onto a stage, travel to another city, become a filmed version and find another audience in another country. Someone can discover it months or years after the original production has closed. Someone else can watch it again because they absolutely loved it the first time. And a theatre fan sitting in a cinema far from London or Broadway can experience a production that once seemed impossible to get to.

And maybe that is the most exciting thing about theatre finding its way onto the big screen. The closing notice might have been posted, but the story does not necessarily have to stop there. A great production can be preserved, shared, revisited, and even reimagined, finding new audiences long after the curtain has come down in the original room. For me, a theatre junkie and critic, that feels like a pretty wonderful second act. And I’m applauding it happily.

In honor of the 30th Anniversary of Jonathan Larson’s rock musical, Rent, Bucks County Playhouse is marking the occasion with a new production directed and choreographed by Jennifer Weber. A two-time Tony Award nominee for & Juliet and KPOP, Ms. Weber has re-imagined the show in a highly visceral and choreographic way.

30 years ago Jonathan Larson wrote the Book, Music and Lyrics for this iconic show. First performances were Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop in 1993, moving to the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway in1996. Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical, Rent ran for 12 years. Unfortunately, the author died tragically before the night of its first performance.

Sam Primack as Mark & the Cast of Rent Photo By Joan Marcus

Loosely based on the 1896 Opera La Boheme by Puccini, it follows the lives of a group of starving, young artists living in Lower Manhattan’s East Village struggling to survive during the height of the AIDS epidemic as they try to pursue their creative dreams.

It’s a testament to Larson’s writing and Weber’s interpretation that this production seems as fresh and as vibrant as if it were created today. The themes of love, loss and friendship that thread through the piece make it appealing and heartfelt.

Austin Turner as Roger & Alysia Velez as Mimi Photo By Joan Marcus

Suffice it to say that this large cast of young professionals are all uber talented.  Especially as is noted in the well executed chorus numbers of which there are many i.e.,  “Seasons of Love”, “La Vie Boheme” and “Rent”. Standout performances include (but not limited to) David Louis Merino as Angel Schunard for his sheer exuberance and expert dance technique, Sam Primack as Mark Cohen for his angelic voice and vitality as our guide through the groups’ trials and triumphs, Alysia Velez for making the role of Mimi Marquez sympathetic although the character does some highly questionable things. Veronica Otim shines as the level headed Joanne Jefferson and Austin Turner as the “ever struggling to find himself”, Roger Davis not only sings, acts and dances but also plays a rockin’ guitar.

(Apologies if it was one of the band’s guitarists and Austin was just faking it.  If it’s true it just proves he’s a good actor – because I couldn’t tell!)

Needless to say, putting the band onstage in this theater is always a wise choice.  And this five person band of 2 Guitars, 2 Keyboards, Bass & Drums rocks it out – which is half the fun.

Scenic Design by Tom Rogers depicts an artist’s colorful loft with large slanted windows and a neon sign reading “RENT”. At the same time that it feels full of life it also feels rundown and abandoned – the perfect mixture. Costumes by Nicole V. Moody, bring back memories of rummaging through downtown thrift shops and flea markets. You know a costume designer has hit the mark if it makes you actually want to wear the outfits she puts together.  And I did!

Last words:  You never saw the hand of the director which means that she did an amazing job.  The show ran effortlessly as if it were a ball of yarn rolling out all by itself.  However, I did notice the choreography – which was  surprising, innovative and exciting – no old hat moves here.  

If you like the show – run to this one.  If you’ve never seen the show – see this one!  For tickets visit BucksCountyPlayhouse.org or call the Box Office at (215) 82-2121.

Rent: Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main Street, New Hope, PA  18938. Running now through September 13, 2026.

Book, Music and Lyrics by Jonathan Larson

Music Director – Alexander Tom

Directed and Choreographed by Jennifer Weber

Running now through September 13, 2026 at

There is a very good musical trying to cross the East River in Brooklyn’s Bridge, the ambitious new work now playing at The Space at Irondale through August 23. With music by Joseph Baker and book and lyrics by director Ray Roderick, the show takes on one of New York’s greatest feats of engineering—the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge—and the remarkable collection of dreamers, workers, politicians, immigrants and, most importantly, one extraordinary woman who made the impossible possible.

What Brooklyn’s Bridge already possesses is a score worth paying attention to. Baker and Roderick have written 21 highly thematic songs, blending classical musical-theatre writing with contemporary pop-style vocals and large, muscular anthems. “Marching On” and “We Built the Bridge” become musical pillars for the first and second acts, respectively, giving the evening a sense of forward momentum even when the book occasionally loses it.

The score is so strong, in fact, that I found myself wishing Brooklyn’s Bridge were closer to an opera—or at least considerably more sung-through. Act One gets bogged down by the sheer amount of history the writers are determined to give us. This is fascinating material, but a musical does not need to tell us everything it knows. It needs to decide what its story is. And I think that story is already sitting there waiting to be claimed.

Sarah Joyce Photo by Arthur Knox

Brooklyn’s Bridge is really about three bridges: the physical bridge being constructed between Brooklyn and Manhattan; the bridge Emily Roebling built for women by stepping into a world in which women were not expected to possess authority; and the human bridge created by the immigrants and laborers whose bodies, skills and, in too many cases, lives made this monument possible. If the writers embrace those three ideas, the musical suddenly has an extraordinarily clear spine.

Tommy Krob, Sarah Joyce Photo by Arthur Knox

The historical story begins with John A. Roebling, the visionary engineer who designed the bridge but died before construction truly began. His son Washington Roebling, played by a terrific Tommy Krob, inherits not simply the project but the almost crushing responsibility of completing his father’s dream. Krob is one of the evening’s standouts, giving us a man overwhelmed by legacy, scarred by war and ultimately physically devastated by decompression sickness after working in the bridge’s underwater caissons.

Krob makes Washington’s deterioration matter because he allows us to see both the determination and vulnerability underneath it. When Washington can no longer physically oversee construction, responsibility increasingly passes to his wife, Emily Roebling, played by Sarah Joyce.

This is where Brooklyn’s Bridge needs its most significant further development. Emily should be the beating heart of this musical. For approximately eleven of the thirteen years it took to complete the bridge, she became essential to its completion, carrying information between her incapacitated husband and the engineers, contractors and officials working on the project while developing formidable technical knowledge herself. In an era when women were denied access to virtually every corridor of professional power she entered, Emily didn’t simply help build a bridge across the East River. She built another bridge for women. Yet the musical never fully gives her that story.

Joyce possesses the vocal equipment for a role that is extraordinarily demanding, but neither the writing nor, at present, the performance quite gives Emily the force necessary to make us feel the magnitude of what this woman accomplished. The conflict needs to be sharper. What did it mean for a woman to walk into those rooms? Who dismissed her? Who resented her? What did she have to learn? What did she sacrifice? What happened the first time the men surrounding this enormous engineering project realized that the woman standing before them knew exactly what she was talking about? Most importantly, where is Emily Roebling’s eleven-o’clock number? It is practically begging to be written.

There comes a moment when Emily needs to stand alone before us and claim what she has done—not merely for Washington, not merely for her father-in-law’s dream, but for herself and for the women who would come after her. Give her the musical equivalent of planting her feet on that bridge and saying: You told me this wasn’t my world. I entered it anyway. You told me I couldn’t build it. By God, I built it. The score has earned that number. So has Emily.

Evan Blackwell and cast Photo by Arthur Knox

Among the other performers, Evan Blackwell comes dangerously close to stealing the show as master mechanic E. F. Farrington. Given “Diggin’ Down” and “On a Wire,” Blackwell knows exactly what to do with them. He sells both numbers with confidence and theatrical instinct, turning what might have been supporting material into two of the evening’s memorable solo moments.

The musical also introduces us to the fascinating political machinery surrounding the bridge. Gannon Thomas plays political cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose devastating drawings helped bring down the corrupt Boss Tweed, played by Matthew Ballestero. Adam Du Plessis appears as bridge company president William C. Kingsley, while Brooklyn reformist mayor Seth Low (Brandon Roth) and the immigrant workers who supplied the human muscle behind the engineering achievement broaden the world considerably.

Those workers deserve even greater prominence. Roughly two dozen men died during the bridge’s construction, while others suffered the same mysterious “caisson disease” that incapacitated Washington Roebling. The bridge we photograph, walk across and treat as an inevitable part of the New York skyline was bought partly with human bodies. That isn’t peripheral history. It is one of the bridges this musical needs to build—the connection between the monument we inherited and the largely forgotten people who paid for it.

Kelly Barclay’s choreography cleverly makes much out of relatively little, giving the company opportunities to shine and creating movement where physical production resources are understandably limited. One particularly effective sequence makes riveting use of Irondale’s balcony, proving that theatrical imagination remains considerably more valuable than expensive scenery.

Roderick directs his own material with confidence, and considering the production’s limited budget, the theatrical world is impressively realized. There is essentially no conventional set to speak of, yet Emilio Maxwell Cerci’s lighting and Mk Giunen’s costumes help establish period, atmosphere and scale without attempting to reproduce the bridge itself. That restraint is wise. We don’t need to see a multimillion-dollar Brooklyn Bridge rising inside a theatre. The music and actors need to build it in our heads.

The non-union company is impressive throughout, and one of the production’s pleasures is how generously the material gives individual performers opportunities to emerge from the ensemble and claim a moment. What Brooklyn’s Bridge needs now is not more history. It needs excavation.

The creators have assembled the facts. They have written an exciting score. They have found the people who built the bridge. The next developmental step is deciding whose emotional journey carries us across it. For me, that person is Emily Roebling.

Special mention must be made of the four onstage musicians, led by composer Joseph Baker and music director Blake Brauer, with Antoine Thouvenin on violin, Zac Swanner on percussion and Lee Meadows on guitar. With only four players, they somehow make Baker’s score sound remarkably lush, layered and fully fleshed out, creating a musical landscape that feels far larger than the number of instruments producing it. There is nothing thin or apologetic about the sound; instead, the musicians become part of the muscular heartbeat of the production, giving the anthems their sweep, the intimate numbers their texture and the entire evening a richness that belies the production’s modest scale. In a show fundamentally about people accomplishing something seemingly impossible with limited resources, it feels particularly appropriate that four musicians can make themselves sound like an orchestra.

Photo by Arthur Knox

Build the first bridge between two cities. Build the second through the woman who entered a man’s world and quietly changed what women could do inside it. Build the third through the immigrants and laborers whose work and sacrifice literally suspended New York over the East River. Then let those three bridges meet.

Brooklyn’s Bridge isn’t there yet, but what is already there makes the trip to Brooklyn worthwhile. More importantly, this feels like a musical whose current production should be regarded as a beginning rather than a destination.

I very much want to see its next stage of development. After hearing this score, Joseph Baker is a composer I will be watching.

Brooklyn’s Bridge plays at The Space at Irondale through August 23.

If Friday was Broadway’s arrival in the country, Saturday was the moment it unpacked its bags and decided to stay awhile.

Photo by Austin Ruffer

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Photo by Austin Ruffer

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Day Two of The Festival, held Saturday, August 15 at Kingston’s Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue, took the ambitious premise introduced on opening day—a destination festival devoted entirely to musical theatre—and turned up the volume. The Broadway Direct Stage filled with Tony winners and Broadway favorites, composers stepped out from behind their scores, unlikely musical moments appeared, and after dark the Hudson River became part nightclub, part theatrical summer camp.

But the emotional heart of Saturday belonged to a musical that changed Broadway 30 years ago.

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Wilson Jermaine Heredia. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown. Photo by Austin Ruffer

No Day But Today: RENT at 30

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Kristen Lee Kelly. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp, Fredi Walker-Brown, Gwen Stewart. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Three decades after RENT exploded onto Broadway and changed the sound, look and audience of the American musical, members of its original Broadway company reunited at The Festival. Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Taye Diggs came together again, transforming what could easily have become a nostalgia exercise into something considerably more moving.

Anthony Rapp and Taye Diggs. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Because RENT is no longer simply a Broadway musical.

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Taye Diggs. Photo by Austin Ruffer

For an entire generation, Jonathan Larson’s work became a marker of time. It arrived speaking about AIDS, art, poverty, friendship, sexuality, chosen family and the terrifying uncertainty of whether tomorrow would arrive at all. Its young artists were trying to create lives in a city that increasingly seemed determined to price them out of existence. Thirty years later, some of those ideas feel less like period details than unfinished conversations.

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown. Photo by Austin Ruffer

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

And there they were again…. Rapp,Pascal, Rubin-Vega, Diggs. Older, certainly. So was the audience that first loved them.

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

But RENT has always contained that strange contradiction: a musical obsessed with mortality that somehow refuses to age. Hearing its music sung by the people who helped introduce it to the world created one of those rare theatrical collisions between memory and the present. The people onstage had lived 30 more years. So had many of the people watching them.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes suddenly seemed like a very small unit of measurement.

Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara Raps. Because Apparently Anything Can Happen Upstate.

Kelli O’Hara Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Kelli O’Hara and daughter, Charlotte Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Saturday wasn’t entirely interested in reverence. One of The Festival’s strengths is its ability to remove Broadway performers from the carefully constructed environments in which audiences normally encounter them. Here there are no characters to disappear behind and no fourth wall demanding obedience. The artists can play. And Kelli O’Hara rapping certainly qualifies.

Kelli O’Hara Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of Broadway’s most exquisite singers—an artist associated with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Adam Guettel and some of the most beautifully controlled vocal performances of her generation—allowed herself to venture considerably outside the territory in which Broadway audiences usually encounter her. That sense of mischief is exactly what an event like The Festival should encourage. We already know what these performers can do eight times a week. The fun is discovering what they do when somebody hands them a microphone beside the Hudson and lets them loose.

Jason Robert Brown Photo by Michaelah Reynold

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Norbert Leo Butz offered a different kind of pleasure, returning to Big Fish, while Jason Robert Brown sat at the piano and performed selections from his own formidable catalogue. Brown remains one of contemporary musical theatre’s most distinctive composer-lyricists, and there is something particularly satisfying about hearing theatre songs stripped back to the person who first imagined them.

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Dasia Thomas, Jenn Colella and others to perform songs from Brown’s past and present shows.

Kelli O’Hara, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry & Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

The Saturday Big Show, featuring Renée Elise Goldsberry, Kelli O’Hara, Norbert Leo Butz, Jenn Collela,

Lena Hall. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Lena Hall. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Lena Hall. Photo by Austin Ruffer

and Lena Hall.

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, and Tyler Joseph Ellis. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Krystina Alabado and Isabelle McCalla. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

A Preview of New Musicals, hosted by NY1’s Frank DiLella, highlighting seven new musicals in development: Autopilot, Bludline, Huzzah, Love Somebody, Regency Girls, Someday Soon, and Star Machine. The talented Solea Pfeiffer, Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Krystina Alabado, Isabelle McCalla and Tyler Joseph Ellis joined.

Some Broadway performances become permanently attached to the actor who introduced them, regardless of how many talented performers inherit the role. Angelica Schuyler’s breathtaking rewind through desire, sacrifice and split-second decision-making is one of those moments, and Goldsberry remains inseparable from it. Bringing “Satisfied” out of the Richard Rodgers Theatre and onto an open-air stage gave Saturday another jolt of Broadway history suddenly living in the present.

That mixture became the defining character of Day Two. This wasn’t merely a collection of performers singing their biggest numbers. The Festival was beginning to demonstrate the value of placing artists from different corners and generations of Broadway beside one another and seeing what happens when the usual theatrical architecture disappears.

When Broadway Goes to Camp

Lauren Patten. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella, Lauren Patten, and Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Then the sun went down. This may ultimately be where The Festival separates itself most successfully from the endless parade of Broadway concerts, conventions and benefit evenings already filling the theatrical calendar. The programming didn’t simply end after the marquee performances. Instead, Broadway nightlife followed Broadway upstate. A cozy campfire set featuring performances from Kelli O’Hara, Jenn Colella, Lauren Patten, Norbert Leo Butz, and more.

Krystina Alabado and Isabelle McCalla. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

A pop-up edition of Club Cumming, the East Village playground created by Alan Cumming and a gathering place for performers, musicians and assorted creatures of the night, brought some downtown Manhattan energy to Kingston. The elegant Hudson Valley retreat suddenly acquired a little glitter around the edges.

Elsewhere, Broadway performers gathered around campfires for acoustic music along the river.

Amber Ardolino. Photo by Austin Ruffer

That image may actually capture the entire weekend better than the “Coachella for Broadway” label that has followed The Festival since it was announced. Coachella suggests scale, spectacle and celebrity. The Festival certainly had all three. But Broadway is fundamentally a community of storytellers, musicians and performers, and some of the weekend’s most appealing moments came when the machinery disappeared.

Seth Rudetsky and Tommy Bracco. Photo by Austin Ruffer

A singer, a song, a fire, the Hudson and people listening. There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about that, particularly for an industry increasingly obsessed with grosses, celebrity casting, social-media engagement and whether a production can survive another week. Remove the commercial machinery for a moment and you’re left with the reason people entered this profession in the first place. They wanted to tell stories.

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds (

Hovering over Saturday was RENT, the musical that once told Broadway audiences that community could become family and that the meaningful measurement of a life wasn’t money, possessions or even time. It was love. Thirty years later, on the banks of the Hudson, the people who first delivered that message found themselves together again. Perhaps that is why the reunion belonged here.

The Festival was attempting to build something Broadway desperately needs and rarely has enough time to create: community without a curtain call waiting at the end of it. Saturday proved there may indeed be an audience for that. And there was still one day left.

Next: Day Three — Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and the finale of Broadway’s first weekend on the Hudson.

Broadway packed a weekend bag, left Times Square behind and headed north. On Friday, August 14, the inaugural The Festival opened at Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue in Kingston, New York, transforming the Hudson River waterfront into something Broadway has rarely attempted: a true destination festival built around the people, music and community of the theatre.

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Produced by Joshua Saltman and David B. Schwartz, The Festival ultimately drew 2,875 attendees from 48 states over its three-day debut, with 165 performers taking part in more than 30 programs. There were 30 musicians, 14 ensemble members and 13 apprentices, but numbers only begin to describe the ambition of what Saltman and Schwartz were attempting. This wasn’t Broadway presenting another concert. It was Broadway borrowing the language of the great music festivals and asking what happens when musical theatre gets out of the theatre.

Campfire Stage photo by Austin Ruffer

The answer, at least on Friday, was that it rather liked the fresh air. At the center of the sprawling weekend was the Broadway Direct Stage, an open-air covered venue surrounded by the Hudson Valley landscape. Instead of velvet seats, chandeliers and the compressed electricity of a Broadway house, audiences found themselves experiencing some of the theatre world’s most recognizable voices against water, sky and the industrial remnants of the historic brickyards. There was something wonderfully incongruous about it: Broadway glamour meeting Hudson Valley earthiness without either having to apologize to the other. The opening day’s lineup immediately established that this wasn’t going to be a modest experiment.

Gianmarco Soresi. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Gianmarco Soresi. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Comedian and actor Gianmarco Soresi hosted the inaugural “The Festival”(The Broadway Festival). He served as the host and emcee

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez

Christopher Jackson. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson

Javier Muñoz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Javier Muñoz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Javier Muñoz

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Solea Pfeiffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers

Cara Rose DiPietro. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Cara Rose DiPietro

Tyler Joseph Ellis. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Tyler Joseph Ellis and Matt Rodin were among the artists helping launch the weekend, while SiriusXM’s Seth Rudetsky did what Rudetsky does particularly well—turn Broadway history, personalities and musical obsession into entertainment.

Tommy Bracco Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of Friday’s most charming ideas belonged to Tommy Bracco, the Newsies alum and Big Brother favorite, who hosted a celebration of Disney music. Bracco began with “Out There” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it was Solea Pfeiffer who provided one of the afternoon’s genuine reminders of how much extraordinary music remains trapped inside Disney’s animated catalogue. Her performances of “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas and “Reflection” from Mulan made a fairly persuasive argument for why Broadway has yet to get its hands on either score.

Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Eva Noblezada. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Then came Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada, whose musical and personal history has become its own little piece of contemporary Broadway mythology. They originated Orpheus and Eurydice together in Hadestown, fell in love, married, and have continued sharing stages since. At Hutton Brickyards, the scale shifted. Away from the machinery of a Broadway production, the two were able to offer something more intimate—a reminder that before scenery, costumes and theatrical spectacle arrive, musical theatre begins with people telling stories through music.

Campfire Stage 2 photo by Austin Ruffer

That intimacy was one of the more intriguing elements of The Festival’s concept. Broadway normally asks audiences to enter its buildings. Here, Broadway entered the audience’s world. People wandered between performances, conversations and events rather than sitting obediently in one seat for two and a half hours. Artists who normally disappear through stage doors after a performance were suddenly part of a larger weekend community.

By evening, however, subtlety was finished.

The Big Show. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The Big Show. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The Big Show Night 1 Company photo by Austin Ruffer

Friday culminated with The Big Show, and the Broadway Direct Stage became exactly what its name promised: a full-scale concert designed to let Broadway voices loose. Cara Rose DiPietro, Tess Soltau and original Rent star Adam Pascal opened with an inspired piece of theatrical mischief, turning Stephen Sondheim’s “A Weekend in the Country” into a self-referential welcome to the weekend, accompanied by more than a dozen Broadway dancers.

It was an appropriate choice. Sondheim’s number is itself about people converging upon a destination carrying expectations, desires and complications with them. Here came thousands of Broadway devotees doing essentially the same thing, only their weekend in the country involved considerably more belting.

And that may be the cleverest thing about The Festival. Broadway has spent decades trying to expand beyond the geographic boundaries of Broadway while still treating the Broadway theatre as the center of the universe. Touring companies travel. Cast albums travel. Stars perform concerts. BroadwayCon created its own gathering place for fans. But the great American music-festival model—travel somewhere beautiful, stay for several days and immerse yourself in the music and the people who make it—has largely belonged to other genres.

Saltman and Schwartz decided musical theatre deserved one too.

They assembled an astonishing inaugural roster across the weekend: Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Norbert Leo Butz, Jason Robert Brown, Lena Hall, Tom Kitt, Andrea McArdle, Alex Newell, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Jenn Colella, Andrew Barth Feldman, Lauren Patten, Denée Benton and many more, culminating in something irresistible to Broadway devotees—a 30th anniversary reunion of the original Broadway cast of Rent.

Behind that amount of talent was an equally formidable creative operation. Tony winner Jerry Mitchell and Jon Rua choreographed the event, with Mitchell and D.B. Bonds directing. Dan Lipton handled musical supervision, Julie McBride served as musical director, and Michael Downs oversaw creative direction and experience design. David Rees provided lighting, Cody Spencer sound, Caite Hevner video and Ryan Park costumes, while Lana Schwartz directed The Festival Apprentices. Chris Gratton served as production manager, technical director and site manager, with Lisa Iacucci as production supervisor.

That is an enormous amount of Broadway infrastructure to transport to the banks of the Hudson, and Friday proved that the concept could actually work.

By the time the weekend ended Sunday, Saltman and Schwartz were already prepared to announce that The Festival will return in 2027.

“We are absolutely thrilled with how The Festival went this weekend,” the producers said following its conclusion, thanking both the fans who had created the weekend’s community and the artists who had filled it. “We couldn’t be prouder of the experience and the incredible team that put it all together. We can’t wait to see you in 2027!”

Neither, apparently, can Broadway. Friday was only the overture.

Next: Day Two of The Festival — when Broadway’s weekend in the country really got underway.