Kris Stewart (director and producer)

Kris Stewart is artistic director at Brisbane Powerhouse, a multidisciplinary arts and cultural precinct and one of the most innovative and lively arts centres in the world. Prior to the appointment with Brisbane Powerhouse, Kris was artistic director at Festival of Voices, Tasmania's largest winter cultural event. As founder and artistic director of the Sydney Fringe festival in 2010 and again in 2013, Kris programmed 3000 artists across more than 250 shows and events in 53 inner city venues that were seen by 100 000 attendees. From 2008 to 2011 Kris was the resident director for the Gordon Frost Organisation in Australia for the blockbuster musical Wicked, overseeing the show artistically including casting, rehearsing and management of the local creative team.

In 2004 Kris founded the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), the world's largest annual musical theatre event. Through his production company Red Sand Media Partners, LLC, Kris Stewart is one the producers of the Obie and Drama Desk award-winning Title of show, 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 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 organisation 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 Theater's Director's Lab and the Commercial Theater Institute (NYC), and completed his post-graduate study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.