Kris Stewart is the founder of the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), the world's largest annual musical theatre event. Through his production company Red Sand Media Partners, Kris Stewart is one the producers of the Obie and Drama Desk award winning Title of show,[1] which opened on Broadway July 17, 2008, at the Lyceum Theatre, and the feature film Red Hook, a teen thriller shot in NYC in 2007 for ‘08 release. Kris Stewart currently serves as Resident Director of the musical Wicked in Australia for the Gordon/Frost Organization.
Prior to NYMF, Kris Stewart was Executive Director of the National Music Theatre Network and Resident Director on shows that included Sisterella, Gael Force Dance, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Chess, and Jekyll & Hyde. In Australia, he has directed for The Production Company, State Opera of South Australia, Melbourne Theatre Company, IMG, Opera Australia and has directed multiple new musicals .
Kris Stewart and NYMF received the $100,000 Jujamcyn Theaters Prize, which is given annually to an international theatre organization that has made an outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent for the theatre. Further to this, his work has been recognised with the 2000 Sir Keith Murdoch Prize for Leadership and Innovation and a 2001 Churchill Fellowship, as well as Green Room Awards and Helpmann Awards and other prizes, including Best Production of 1996 for Skylight, and the SANTOS Emerging Director Prize (1996) and nominations for the Ockrent Fellowship (NYC) and the Young Australian of the Year. Kris Stewart is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theatre's Director's Lab and the Commercial Theater Institute (NYC), and completed his post-graduate study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.