By Sunday, Broadway had been living beside the Hudson for three days. The experiment had worked. What began Friday as an ambitious idea—take Broadway out of its traditional theaters, move some of its greatest artists two hours north of Times Square and create something resembling a theatrical music festival—reached its finale on Sunday, August 16, at Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue in Kingston.

Audra McDonald. Photo by Austin Ruffer

If you are going to close a Broadway festival, having Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell around certainly doesn’t hurt.

The Festival Apprentices. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The final day of The Festival, produced by Joshua Saltman and David B. Schwartz, spread performances across the Broadway Direct Stage, New 42 Stage and surrounding grounds, bringing together Broadway royalty, composers, younger performers and some pairings audiences aren’t likely to encounter during an ordinary night in the theatre.

The Festival Apprentices. Photo by Austin Ruffer

After Friday’s introduction and Saturday’s emotional 30th anniversary reunion of the original Broadway cast of RENT, Sunday felt less like another day of programming and more like the culmination of what The Festival had been trying to create all weekend. Broadway had come to play.

Audra McDonald. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

There are Broadway stars, and then there is Audra McDonald. With six Tony Awards and a career that has moved effortlessly between musical theatre, drama, opera, television and concert stages, McDonald doesn’t need much introduction. Her presence alone gave the final day a sense of occasion.

Alongside her was Brian Stokes Mitchell, another performer whose voice is practically woven into modern Broadway history. Mitchell has spent decades making leading-man charisma look deceptively easy, from Ragtime and Kiss Me, Kateto Man of La Mancha and beyond.

Audra McDonald and Denée Benton. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Audra McDonald and Denée Benton. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Audra McDonald and Denée Benton. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Denée Benton, representing another generation of Broadway artists, joined them among Sunday’s marquee performers. Benton possesses that wonderful combination of classical musical-theatre intelligence and contemporary immediacy that has made her work in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 and Into the Woods so memorable.

Denée Benton. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Audra McDonald and Denée Benton. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of The Festival’s smartest choices throughout the weekend was refusing to segregate Broadway by generation. Legends weren’t treated as museum pieces, and younger performers weren’t relegated to an opening act. Everyone inhabited the same landscape. That is how an art form remains alive.

Tom Kitt. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Sunday also put the people who actually create Broadway’s musical language center stage. Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tom Kitt hosted “Tom Kitt & Friends,”

Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal. Photo by Austin Ruffer

joined by performers including Anthony Rapp and Solea Pfeiffer.

Tom Kitt and Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Kitt’s catalogue alone could sustain an afternoon. From Next to Normal to If/Then, Almost Famous and his extensive work as an arranger and orchestrator, his music has become part of the sound of contemporary Broadway.

Denée Benton, Lauren Patten, Andrew Barth Feldman. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

There is also something particularly revealing about hearing a composer at the piano with singers who understand his musical language. Strip away scenery, costumes, automation and millions of dollars of Broadway infrastructure, and what remains is the thing from which every musical begins: Someone writes a song. Someone else sings it. An audience listens. For all The Festival’s scale, that fundamental simplicity repeatedly became one of the weekend’s greatest pleasures.

The looser format also allowed Sunday to indulge in something Broadway rarely gets enough opportunity to do: mix people up.

Patti Murin. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Patti Murin and Colin Donnell. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Colin Donnell and Patti Murin. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Real-life couple Patti Murin and Colin Donnell took on “Here I Go Again,” bringing a little rock-and-roll swagger to the Hudson.

Andrew Barth Feldman. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Andrew Barth Feldman. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Andrew Barth Feldman. Photo by Austin Ruffer

while Andrew Barth Feldman and Tyler Joseph Ellis offered another pairing of distinctive young Broadway personalities.

Lauren Patten. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Lauren Patten and Jenn Colella. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Lauren Patten. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Then there were Jenn Colella and Lauren Patten, two performers with the kind of individual stage presence that makes putting them together almost mischievous.

That is part of the appeal of a festival format. Broadway productions are enormously controlled machines. Casting is specific. Repertoire is fixed. Characters dictate who sings with whom. A festival can simply ask: Wouldn’t it be fun if these people got onstage together? Quite often, the answer is yes.

Photo by Austin Ruffer

The day’s major collaborative event, The Big Show: Sunday in the Park, provided an appropriately theatrical title for the closing celebration. There was something almost too perfect about it. Broadway was literally spending Sunday outside, surrounded not by the concrete canyons of Midtown but by river, sky and the vast industrial beauty of Hutton Brickyards. After three days of concerts, conversations, unexpected combinations, campfires and late-night revelry, the final Big Show gathered the weekend’s energy back onto the main stage. By then, The Festival had begun to feel less like an event testing an idea and more like a community that had temporarily built itself a home. That may be its greatest accomplishment.

By the time the final note had been sung, 2,875 people from 48 of the 50 states had made their way to Kingston for the inaugural weekend. That number deserves some perspective. This wasn’t Times Square, where millions of potential ticket buyers pass through the neighborhood. Audiences had to decide to come. They had to travel to Kingston and devote a weekend to an event that had never existed before. They came from virtually the entire country.

Across three days, The Festival presented more than 30 programs featuring 165 onstage performers, including 30 musicians, 14 ensemble members and 13 apprentices. Those statistics are impressive, but the more interesting achievement may be what happened between the numbers. The Festival created an environment where a Broadway legend could be followed by an emerging performer, where composers could play their own work, where RENT could reunite 30 years later, where performers could gather around campfires after the formal programming ended, and where audiences could experience Broadway without the invisible wall separating the people onstage from the people sitting in the house. That is considerably harder to manufacture than a concert.

Broadway has a new summer tradition Joshua Saltman and David B. Schwartz didn’t wait long to answer the obvious question. The Festival will return in 2027.

Additional details will come later, but announcing another year before the inaugural weekend had even faded into memory was perhaps the clearest indication that Broadway’s great weekend in the country wasn’t intended to be a one-off experiment.

Over three days, The Festival demonstrated something Broadway occasionally forgets about itself. The theatre isn’t a collection of buildings between 41st and 54th Streets. It isn’t a Tony Award, a marquee or a $200 orchestra seat. It is composers and actors, dancers and musicians, technicians and apprentices—and audiences who will apparently travel from 48 states simply to be around the thing they love.

Friday asked whether Broadway could become a destination festival. Saturday gave it a history and a heartbeat. Sunday, with Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Tom Kitt and a small army of Broadway talent filling the banks of the Hudson with music, the answer became rather obvious.

See you in 2027.

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.

Tucked away on West 47th Street, smack dap in midtown, is a hidden sushi spot that should not be missed. But you can if you don’t know the secret entrance. Sushi by Bou at 132 West 47th Street, is an intimate hideaway that feels worlds away from the chaos of Times Square. Look for the door and staircase, next to the Sanctuary hotel.  You may walk right past it, but please make sure you find it!

You might pass right by it the street entrance… look for the wooden box.

Seriously… enter thru this door!

My dining partner and I went for a lunch and tried the traditional 12-course Signature Omakase, a chef’s-choice experience featuring some of the freshest fish of the season, sourced from Japan and Mexico.

Chef Jaimie

Our chef, Jaimie was knowledgeable, engaging and clearly loved what he was doing and loved feeding people. As you may know, omakase means “I’ll leave it up to you,” essentially putting the meal in the chef’s hands.

At Sushi by Bou, the experience is a carefully timed progression of sushi, with each piece prepared and served in sequence. The restaurant focuses on sustainably sourced seafood selected for freshness and flavor, plus a flair for theatrical presentation for the patrons.

And a good time was had by all.

We made our way through all 12 courses, but several stood out as favorites. The Chopped Tuna was a delight, the Spotted Prawn had an unexpected wasabi kick, and the Miso Black Cod was so tender it melted in your mouth. Each piece offered something different, and part of the fun was not knowing what would come next. The last piece of BBQ eel turned out to be the unsung hero, but a burst of flavor from the sauce.. delish!

The other patrons dining alongside us were from Israel and were equally enthusiastic about the food, calling it some of the best sushi they had experienced in the city.

Lineup

What makes Sushi by Bou particularly special is the intimate setting. The Times Square location combines the artistry of traditional sushi with an “in the know” type of atmosphere. It is a great choice for a pre-theater dinner, a business meal, a celebration, or an after-Broadway bite. Impress your friends with being an insider in this foodie’s delight.

Sushi by Bou has locations throughout the country, but the Times Square location is the only one that serves lunch, making it an especially convenient option for a midday business meeting or client lunch.

For those looking for an even more indulgent experience, Sushi by Bou also offers its 17-course Bougie Omakase and 17-course Bou Reserve Omakase, which feature premium ingredients and special additions.

With its intimate counter, talented chefs and excellent fish, Sushi by Bou Times Square is a little bit of Japan in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan.

Be sure to make reservations ahead of time.

SUSHI BY BOU

132 West 47^th Street,  NYC

Times Square has hosted almost everything imaginable, but on August 25 it is handing the controls to the kids.

@wonderamatv The Wonderama Wonder Games are back! Join in on the fun starting August 25th, live from Times Square! Join host @davidosmond and discover why The Wonderama Wonder Games are truly The Games That Everyone Can Play! #wonderamatv #timessquare #gaming #livemusicconcert ♬ original sound – Wonderama

Wonderama, America’s longest-running children’s television show, is bringing its inaugural Wonder Games to the Crossroads of the World for a day where music, gaming, emerging talent and some wonderfully old-school Wonderama fun collide with the digital generation.

David Osmond

Hosted by David Osmond, Wonderama Chuckie and Alisa Obrianova, Wonder Games is built around a rather irresistible premise: “The Games Everyone Can Play.” That means young gamers, musicians, creators and families won’t simply be watching the action—they’re part of it.

The event brings Wonderama together with FENIX360, AbleGamers and the Empire State Scholastic Esports Federation, with support from the Times Square Alliance and One Times Square/Jamestown. Expect live music, creator showcases, family activities and those classic Wonderama games alongside something that certainly wasn’t part of children’s television when Wonderama first hit the airwaves: competitive esports.

Student gamers will take center stage for exhibition matches in Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, presented with the Empire State Scholastic Esports Federation. And while parents may still occasionally wonder how sitting in front of a screen became a team sport, scholastic esports has become an arena for strategy, communication, collaboration and community—and these students are coming to Times Square to show what they can do.

“Wonder Games is about much more than competition,” said Wonderama Executive Producer Charles Armstrong. “It is about creating a place where every child feels welcome, creativity is celebrated and young people can discover how their interests in music, gaming, technology and storytelling can open pathways to future opportunities.”

That idea of discovery has always been embedded in Wonderama’s DNA. Long before everyone with a phone could become a content creator, the show understood something television occasionally forgot: kids don’t merely want to be entertained. They want to participate. Wonder Games takes that philosophy into 2026.

Through FENIX360, a global platform designed to help musicians, performers, artists, gamers and other creators connect directly with audiences, Times Square will also become a showcase for emerging talent. Young performers and digital creators will have the chance not simply to appear before the live crowd but to reach FENIX360’s international creative community. In other words, the kid performing in Times Square on Tuesday could be reaching an audience halfway around the world by Wednesday. But perhaps the most important part of Wonder Games is contained in those four words: everyone can play.

Wonderama’s partnership with AbleGamers puts accessibility directly into the experience, highlighting adaptive gaming technology and approaches that allow players with disabilities to participate. Gaming is at its best when the controller isn’t a barrier to entry, and Wonder Games makes the argument that ability shouldn’t determine who gets invited into the game.

There is another side to growing up digitally, of course. Wonderama will also address creating safer and healthier online environments for children and families, supporting the goals behind the Kids Online Safety Act and recognizing Senator Richard Blumenthal’s work in pushing children’s online safety into the national conversation. It is a surprisingly broad agenda for a day of games—and that may be exactly what makes the concept work.

Wonderama has survived generations of childhood because childhood itself keeps changing. The games change. The technology changes. The screens certainly change. Today’s kids inhabit a world where performer, gamer, programmer, musician and digital creator increasingly overlap, and careers exist that their parents couldn’t have named when they were the same age.

What hasn’t changed is the desire to play, create, compete, belong and be seen. On August 25, Wonderama is taking all of that, putting it beneath the lights of Times Square and inviting New York to come play. Because Times Square may belong to Broadway most nights. But for one day, Player One is taking over.

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.