“You wish to go to the festival?” “The festival?” “The king’s festival?”  

To any musical theater fan, “the festival” likely first calls to mind those taunting words from the opening number of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, sung to Cinderella by her evil stepmother and stepsisters.  

But this August, the organizers of a major new event roughly two hours north of Broadway are hoping the phrase will also take on a bigger meaning. From Friday Aug. 14th through Sunday Aug. 16th, Hutton Brickyards — an industrial-chic riverfront hotel and venue overlooking the Hudson River in New York’s scenic Ulster County — will welcome a slew of the Great White Way’s biggest stars (and their fans) for three concert-packed days: the first-ever iteration of The Festival. 

“This came about because I am a big music festival guy, and I love, love Coachella,” says Joshua Saltman, co-founder of The Festival. “I love the destination, immersive nature of those music festivals — this sort of escape for a weekend a year, where you’re in this different place with this community.”  
It was at Coachella, about six years ago, that the “a-ha moment” for The Festival happened for Saltman. “I was with some of my friends who were big theater people also, and we said in kind of a joking way, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if there was a Coachella for Broadway?’”  

A longtime Disney executive who was still with the company at the time, Saltman thought his pipe dream could only become a reality with a similarly huge sponsorship partner.  Then he went on The Broadway Cruise (a five-day Norwegian sailing to the Caribbean with Broadway stars onboard in varied programming, produced by Sixthman) with his wife. “And I had a sort of epiphany,” he recalls. “That was for a community of about 1500 people, and I thought, ‘Hey, what if we did not for 20,000 people, but for 3,000 really committed fans?’ That’s something I feel we could do.”  

Back on dry land, he connected with former Disney colleague and fellow theater-lover David Schwartz to start ideating The Festival; from there, it was “a 13-month sprint,” bringing on a casting agent, production designer, choreographer and directors (Tony-winner Jerry Mitchell and his longtime collaborator DB Bonds) — and of course finding both the venue and talent that would bring in crowds. 

For the former, the founders immediately had particulars in mind. The venue would have to be within two hours of New York City, accessible for both the core audience and talent. It would need shelter for 3000 people, in case of inclement weather. And it would ideally feel like an urban escape: at “a really good music festival, the place becomes part of the experience,” Saltman says. Hutton Brickyards in Kingston — a town The Festival’s website brands as “where history meets hip” and “a former state capitol turned creative hotbed” — fit the bill perfectly (and in an amusing coincidence happened to be a place Mitchell had once considered for his own wedding).  

As for the programming, Saltman jokes that “we did it backwards — we gathered the talent, and now what do they do?” The Festival’s headliners could all topline a Broadway Coachella, including names like Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Alex Newell, Christopher Jackson and Eva Noblezada, plus original Rent cast alums Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp.  

A rendering of the Broadway Direct Stage at The Festival (courtesy of DKC O&M).

“You’re bringing all these great actors together, who the only time they perform together is at an awards show, and it’s like ‘Hi! Bye!,’” Mitchell says. “Here, there’s no awards at stake, so everyone’s spirit will I hope be in that communal place — which is what makes something like this so special.” 

Pascal organized one of the weekend’s highlights: a 30th anniversary Rent cast reunion, “a really intimate experience for our fans” that he notes will be a “proper” reunion featuring 13 original cast members. “The collective festival music experience is something that mainstream music has had for decades. I wanted to be involved in bringing that same experience to the musical theater audience,” he tells Billboard.  

Saltman and Schwartz’s teams had individual Zooms with each headlining actor, asking a kind of 20 Questions of Festival Wishes: a song they’d want to sing around a campfire, a dream duet partner (Pascal, they note with a laugh, was a frequent mention among the younger female participants), the song that first got them into Broadway, and more.  Those answers ultimately informed the programming, which will take place across three stages during the day, adding a fourth in the evenings. 

Though some self-contained shows are planned (composers Tom Kitt and Jason Robert Brown, for instance, will bring in talent to sing their music), most are constructed around themes like ‘80s Jukebox, TikTok Ya Don’t Stop, Broadway Inspirations, Duet to Me One More Time and The Disney Songbook. There will be two evening Campfire Singalongs (one hosted by cult-favorite pop singer-songwriter Betty Who, who made her Broadway debut in Hadestown in 2023). But the centerpiece of each day will be The Big Show, a mainstage performance each night, overseen by Mitchell and his creative team. “They really are fully-realized shows, from the opening number to the closing, and they all deliver a headliner,” Saltman explains. 

Schwartz jokes that he and Saltman “realize we are going to have to teach some Broadway people how to ‘festival.’ For a lot of people, it’s going to be a new experience.” The Festival offers both general admission and reserved ticket options (the latter for audience members accustomed to the idea that a ticket means an assigned seat in a theater), but the co-founders note that attendees will have to adopt a more Coachella-esque mindset about each day’s activities. 

“You could get 12 hours a day of amazing programming and still not see everything,” Saltman continues. “There’s so much talent that you have to make some tough choices —and that’s part of the fun of a Coachella or any music festival, figuring out what your day is like, so that at the end of the day you feel like you got to see everything you wanted.” 

Tickets (which cover all three days) are priced at four tiers, with the average at $800; GA is about $450, while VIP premium passes are about $1550. “A lot of people are leaning into the VIP, because they just really want to know they’re going to have that kind of experience,” says Saltman.  But in an effort to draw locals as well as expand the potential inaugural audience, Festival organizers are offering a limited number of single-day tickets, starting at $191. “People don’t know what this is, so we understand in the first year they’ll want to sample it,” Saltman says. 

As of early July, Schwartz says, ticket sales have borne out his and Saltman’s hunch that The Festival could draw a crowd far beyond Broadway’s home city: 41 of the 50 states were represented among ticket buyers, plus “multiple countries and continents,” proof of the idea that there is, as he puts it, “a diaspora of around the country and around the world — and this is an opportunity for all the folks who love this music and this art form to come together and celebrate it for three days in a way that hasn’t happened before.”  

“So many Broadway performers do concerts around the world, so why not bring them all together to celebrate the community?” says Tony-winner Lena Hall, one of the headliners. “I think The Festival will expand the scope of musical theater.”  

As for what a successful Festival will look like for Saltman, Schwartz and Mitchell? “All three of us and our collaborators looking at each other Monday morning,” Saltman says, “and saying, ‘This has to happen again.’”