Career
Prior to the appointment with Brisbane Powerhouse, Kris was Artistic Director at Festival of Voices, Tasmania"s largest winter cultural event. 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.
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, Image, 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 (New York City) and the Young Australian of the Year. Kris Stewart is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Theater"s Director"s Laboratory and the Commercial Theater Institute (New York City), and completed his post-graduate study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
