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BROADWAY BULLET: Well, I'm sitting here in the hallway outside of our studio because we have a lot of interns talking with NYMF about getting our massive coverage for NYMF going, and I'm sitting here with the illustrious, omnipresent executive director, Kris Stewart. How are you doing?
Kris Stewart: I'm glad to be omnipresent, it's a good thing to be. (laughter)
BB: Well, we want to let everyone know that there is a great interview about all things festival-related in our very first episode ever from last year.
KRIS: Yeah.
BB: So people can still check that out.
KRIS: There was great coverage last year; we had a lot of shows come through Broadway Bullet last year, so that was very good.
BB: So I thought a lot of what we'd talk about this year are some of your favorite highlight moments from festivals in your past, and some things that come into your head.
KRIS: Yeah. I have some funny ones. We're going into, I believe, our fourth festival now, and thinking back to the first year of the festival, it was such a fly-by-the seat-of our-pants kind of thing, and we really didn't know if it was going to happen for a second time. I think that summer was also the first summer of SPF [Summer Play Festival], and there was a lot of festival activity in Manhattan, and a lot of us were sort of trying this for the first time. And I think I never would have expected it to have grown as much as it has. It was really filling a gap because I really feel like it's a part of the community now, and a lot of people think that we have been around a lot longer than we have. I remember that first year, the two things that stick most in my memory was probably the first performance of [title of show] because it was so much about the festival, but it also sort of suited the spirit of what we were doing, which was kind of irreverant, you know? It was sort of a "fuck you" -- are we allowed to say that on Broadway Bullet?
BB: Yeah. (laughter)
KRIS: Because a lot of what we were doing was sort of saying that musical theater isn't a club, it's something that we should all belong to, and it 
could be kind of youthful and vibrant and different, and it doesn't need to be the way it's been for the past fifty years; we can do different things with this. And that show so matched the spirit of what we wanted to do. The other one is, I think, the first performance of The Great American Trailer Park Musical -- and also, you know what, Altar Boyz was amazing in the first year, and you had these crowds spilling out of the 47th Street theater onto the street because the whole show had sold out weeks in advance of the festival, but people weren't used to pre-booking for festivals. They weren't used to this idea that they couldn't just turn up and get a ticket. So we would have 100, 200 people arriving, but then another couple of hundred just thinking they could turn up and get a ticket. So that's 400 people out on the street, with no lobby space at the 47th Street Theater -- cars honking, trying to get past, and people annoyed, trying to walk their dogs. It was like, "God, look at this!" But I also remember The Great American Trailer Park, that was the first show of the festival that year, I think, where watching it, it seemed like you were watching a hit show. It seemed like -- I imagine it was like seeing a film at Sundance once, that no one really knew was out there, and then suddenly burst out into existence. And Trailer Park had been kicking around for a while, but hadn't ever had this meeting of talent, of the level of performers that were in it, and you really felt like you were able to see something that other people weren't able to see. You really felt like, "Oh my God, this show, it's been an incredible opportunity to be a part of this."
