THE FESTIVAL closes inaugural Broadway weekend with 2027 return plan

Organisers Joshua Saltman and David B. Schwartz used the closing concert of THE FESTIVAL at Hutton Brickyards in Kingston, New York, to announce a planned return in 2027, according to Vulture’s post-event report. The commitment points to a second edition for the Broadway-focused outdoor festival, but no written announcement has yet supplied dates, a venue, a line-up or ticketing arrangements.

The inaugural edition ran from 14 to 16 August 2026 at Hutton Brickyards, a riverfront destination outside Manhattan. Official promotion presented it as a three-day outdoor music festival celebrating Broadway performers and repertoire. The organisers did not stage complete musicals. Instead, they built the weekend from concert, showcase and participatory formats.

Across multiple performance areas, audiences could choose among solo concerts, themed programmes, composer tributes, participatory activities and previews of developing work. Nightly ensemble presentations gathered larger groups of performers. Official and advance descriptions were not consistent on an exact stage count, referring either to three stages, three plus a separate evening space, or four. The variation appears to reflect scheduling and venue configuration. In practice, several areas operated concurrently, creating a changing selection of events rather than the single production and fixed running order associated with a conventional Broadway engagement.

Vulture’s eyewitness report documented several of the weekend’s marquee musical moments. Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell sang Wheels of a Dream, while Andrew Barth Feldman revisited material from DEAR EVAN HANSEN. Norbert Leo Butz returned to songs associated with THE LAST FIVE YEARS, and the report noted Kelli O’Hara’s repeated appearances across the weekend. The current official roster also lists Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, Alex Newell, Denée Benton and Eva Noblezada among a broader field of advertised artists.

A concert marking RENT’s 30th anniversary was one of the programme’s main anchors. The official cast page identified original Broadway company members Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Taye Diggs, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Fredi Walker-Browne, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Rodney Hicks, Timothy Britten Parker, Aiko Nakasone and Kristen Lee Kelly for the reunion. The gathering gave the festival a concentrated anniversary event alongside its solo and themed programming.

Vulture reported that Saltman developed the idea by combining his interests in Broadway and large music festivals. He later partnered with Schwartz, a former Disney colleague. Pascal joined the organising effort around the RENT reunion, connecting one of the weekend’s central programmes directly to the festival’s development.

The public launch came on 28 January 2026. Priority ticket sales were scheduled for 3 March and general public sales for 6 March. Further programme announcements followed before August, moving from the initial artist billing to a more detailed account of themed concerts, stage programming and development presentations. The announced sales timetable therefore preceded much of the detailed programme disclosure, which arrived through later releases.

The event was produced by Joshua Saltman’s A Weekend in the Country with David B. Schwartz. Official advance materials credited Jerry Mitchell and D.B. Bonds as directors, Mitchell and Jon Rua as choreographers, and Dan Lipton in music supervision. American Theatre reported before the event that seven developing musicals were scheduled for preview presentations. That component put work in progress beside established repertoire, performer-led concerts and the RENT anniversary. Those creative credits applied across the festival programme, not a single staged musical.

The choice of Hutton Brickyards made the weekend a destination event rather than an extension of Manhattan’s theatre district. The venue put Broadway programming in a riverfront outdoor setting, while the location made travel, parking and shuttle planning part of the audience experience. The venue choice was therefore part of the programming model as well as a question of audience logistics.

The advance official ticket page advertised three-day general admission from US$425 before fees and premium reserved passes from US$1,450 before fees. Parking and shuttle products were priced separately. The large gap between the two pass levels reflected a formal division between reserved and general-admission access. The three-day structure also framed admission as a full-weekend purchase rather than a ticket to one performance. These were advertised prices, however, and do not establish eventual ticket sales or revenue.

Vulture described strong audience enthusiasm across the weekend and unusually informal interaction between performers and spectators. Its account presented that intimacy as a distinction from a standard Broadway engagement. The same report also recorded concerns from some general-admission attendees about obstructed views and exposure to the weather. It did not present those complaints as representative of the whole audience, and no official post-event response to the reported access and weather concerns was located.

No verified attendance, capacity use, ticket-sales total, revenue, budget, sponsorship or profitability figures were located. Nor was there a definitive post-event roster recording every appearance, substitution, withdrawal or curtailed performance. The official list therefore cannot substantiate that every advertised artist performed, and the available evidence does not support claims that THE FESTIVAL sold out or achieved measurable commercial success.

Even with those limits, the inaugural programme combined prominent Broadway performers, an original-cast reunion, composer-focused work, audience participation and new-musical development in a single destination-festival framework. Its wider industry interest lies in that mix of established repertoire and work in progress, delivered through the choice-based timetable and tiered access of a large outdoor music event.

No detail currently available establishes that a second edition will repeat Hutton Brickyards, the 2026 ticket structure or the same multistage configuration. The practical question for 2027 is whether the organisers retain the destination model and how, if at all, they adjust access arrangements after the concerns recorded during the inaugural weekend.