Kris recently served as Resident Director for the Australian production of Wicked, which opened at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre in July 2008. One of the most successful musicals in Australia history, more on Wicked can be found at Wicked Australia.

Though he has recently focussed primarily on directing and producing, Kris’ has had extensive experience as an assistant and associate director, and as an educator. He has been a guest speaker or panellist for Opera America, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, The 2008 UK Musical Theatre Conference, The Entertainment Industry Expo NYC, NYU/Tisch School of Drama, NY Theatre Resources, The American Theatre Wing, the League of American Theatres and Producers and the NYC Emerging Artist and Producers panel, and he has been part of the nominating and judging committees for the Macarthur Fellowship, The Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize (musical theatre) and Dance Break.

Earlier in his career, he was fortunate enough to work for two years as the assistant to the artistic director at Melbourne Theatre Company. Here, Kris assisted on productions that Roger Hodgman was staging, and restaged tours or school productions. This began with Assassins and Skylight and finished with being the Resident Director for the Melbourne Theatre Company and International Management Group production of A Little Night Music.

From there, he moved on to work with the Jacobsen Group, and acted as Resident Australian Director for the productions of Sisterella, Jekyll and Hyde, Beauty and the Beast and Chess, and conceived and directed the dance theatre piece Gaelforce Dance for New Zealand and North America.

Other assistant directing work included assisting Michael Edwards for the State Opera of SA’s production of Eugene Onegin, Warren Coleman on the State Theatre of SA’s The Venetian Twins, George Ogilvie on As You Like It, as well as Angels in America Pt. 1 and 2 (to Chris Edmund and Leith Taylor) and The Magic Flute (WA Opera – Lindy Hume).

Kris has also had experience of university teaching and leading master classes and was head of the MSA Performing Arts Department and Artistic Director of Student Theatre Activities for Monash University. This was an extension of Kris’ previous teaching experience, which had included being a staff teacher (for ages 12 – 22) with the National Theatre, convening the Queensland Music Theatre Conference, being an assessor for the WA Department of the Arts Stages new writer program, creating the syllabus for the West Australian Children’s Drama Company and managing the workshop program at the South Australian Youth Theatre Company (while acting as Artistic Director).

Kris has freelanced as a lecturer at the Ballarat Academy of Performing Arts, the Children’s Performing Company of Australia and Queensland University, and while in NYC have recently been an adjudicator for the New Jersey Performing Arts Association and a sessional Acting teacher for the Educational Alliance, New York City.

Kris Stewart completed his directing studies at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, with two key productions – Rags and Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down.

Three Guys Naked is very endearing, but is rarely produced as it is certainly a product of the period in which it was written, and it is a great challenge to write a show about stand-up comedians and make it as funny as your audience is expecting. When we produced it, we took the opportunity to make some changes to libretto and play it fast and loose – which seemed to work for the show.

Rags was Kris Stewart’s thesis show while studing at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, and the perfect thing to do in a training establishment, where we could spend a lot of time and put a lot of resources towards what is a very ambitious idea. We really tried to create a world that spoke evocatively of that moment in history – the teeming masses downtown, the new world being created around them, the oppressiveness and the hope.