NEW MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT

INTERVIEWKris has worked on a number of other developmental projects across his career. This included spending eighteen months as executive director of the National Music Theatre Network, before launching NYMF.

Since 1984, NMTN has presented several hundred public concerts intended to promote new works, including The NMTN Annual Concert, the NMTN Songbook Series, The Broadway Dozen and the BroadwayUSA! program, which presents new musicals throughout the United States.

While at the National Music Theater Network, Kris was in charge of overseeing its new works program and two seasons of NMTN developmental productions, as well as its gala benefit, with the cast of Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway production of La Boheme.

Kris also spent a year as the consulting director for the Theatre for the American Musical, a NYC based foundation that funded writer support for creators of new music theatre, and there Kris headed their grant and commissioning program.

Through his career, Kris has commissioned the creation of a number of new musicals, including Common Grounds and Platforms (two new dance musicals), Wrong Number (a musical created through improvisation, in collaboration with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater), the Guerilla Musicals Project (spontaneous musicals that would interrupt events across NYC), Web Site Story (a user generated musical, created through online collaboration) and Innovative Leisure (a musical on the rise and fall of Atari, in collaboration with the Ensemble Studio Theatre).  He has directed the workshops of The Jackyl and Carved in Air, and has overseen the development of a number of new works programs, including projects with the Victorian Art Centre and the City of Stonnington.

“The work that NMTN has done has been thrilling, surprising, and necessary. Its energy never flags. This terrific program continues to ignite the creativity of some of our best musical theater artists.” — John Lithgow, actor

“Tim Jerome, Kris Stewart and NMTN have engineered a totally unique program that has helped dozens of new works move from the page to the stage” — Brian Stokes Mitchell, actor