What It Was Like at The Festival and All the Details From the Epic RENT Reunion

If you wish to go to The Festival, look no further than Kingston, New York. The three-door outdoor event featured endless performances from your favorite Broadway performers all weekend long. 

The Coachella-like experience began on Friday with performances by Alex Newell, Mandy Gonzalez, Christopher Jackson, Javier Muñoz, Jasmine Amy Rogers and many more. 

There were three outdoor stages at The Festival, so a performance was always taking place. The bigger performances were held on the central mainstage, where there was plenty of seating for guests to take in the action. However, most of the seating at the Broadway Direct Stage was assigned, so if you’re planning on attending next year, keep that in mind when choosing your tier of tickets. 

If you’re going for a more relaxed and casual experience, Festival-goers brought blankets to sit on the ground near the gorgeous views of the Hudson River. They also came in handy when checking out performances on the New 42 Stage and the Campfire Stage, which both offered limited seating due to their intimate nature — but plenty of grass and tons of sunshine. 

In between sets — or if you just wanted to walk around and connect with other theater fans — attendees had access to food trucks and bars on each side of Hutton Brickyards, where The Festival was held. There were also vendors set up close to the mainstage where fans could purchase Broadway merch or learn more about what’s happening in the theater world, such as the upcoming annual Stage and Screen Sleep Out hosted by Covenant House.  

While there were opportunities for photo opps and autograph signings, there wasn’t too much one-on-one time with talent like there are at other fan conventions. Performers seemed to be tightly scheduled to hop between sets and stages or they were shuttled off the premises after they exited the stage. However, if you were lucky, you could occasionally catch icons like Adam Pascal casually eating lunch on a lawn chair overlooking the water. 

Saturday’s programming was arguably the most exciting of the weekend. The day was jam-packed with performances from theater icons, and the ultimate highlight was seeing 13 of the 15 original Broadway cast members from Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning musical Rent reunite in celebration of the show’s 30th anniversary. 

But before that, Jenn Colella hosted an hourlong set of Broadway stars singing 1980s tunes at which Lena Hall and Renée Elise Goldsberry provided Norbert Leo Butz with background vocals (and dancing!) and Kelli O’Hara was even seen rapping. Social media stars like Mitch Wood and Tyler Joseph Ellis performed a set on a smaller stage, where Tommy Bracco was seen kicking things off with “I Can Do That” from A Chorus Line, straddle jumps and all! 

New musicals from up-and-coming and established writers got to show off a few numbers exclusively for Festival attendees. Jason Robert Brown was joined by friends for a set where Butz also made an appearance, and both sang songs from The Last Five Years. Meanwhile, Hall had a performance of her own, and of course she was giving away a few “Lena F**king Hall” t-shirts to those in the audience. 

At the Rent 30th anniversary reunion, all were there except Idina Menzel, who was at Disney’s D23 event, and Jesse L. Martin, who had a scheduling conflict. But the vibes were still incredibly high. Pascal and costar Anthony Rapp, who respectively played Roger and Mark, opened the set with “Rent” and received a standing ovation from the hundreds in attendance. 

Hosted by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, the reunion also featured stories from the early days of Rent when the musical opened on Broadway in 1996 at the Nederlander Theatre. 

“[Larson] came to a party of mine, and a friend of mine came up to me after Jonathan left the party and said, ‘Who was that guy?’” Rapp recalled of their early days together. “I said, ‘That’s my friend.’ [The person] asked him what he did for a living, and he said, with a perfectly straight face, ‘I’m the future of musical theater.’” 

Rodney Hicks, who played Paul and others in Rent’s original Broadway company, stepped in for Martin to sing Tom Collins’ part in “I’ll Cover You” opposite Wilson Jermaine Heredia. And Lauren Patten was revealed as a special guest to join Fredi Walker-Browne for “Take Me or Leave Me.”  

“Some of you know this: ‘Take Me or Leave Me’ did not exist at the start of the show,” Walker-Browne told attendees. “[Jonathan] wrote it off of me and Idina, and I don't have any words for that. But it was the last song he ever wrote. The weight of that is heavy, but I just want you guys to know that whenever you hear that song, that’s the last thing [he wrote].” 

The evening also included performances of “Out Tonight,” “Another Day,” “Will I?,” “La Vie Boheme” and ended with a powerful rendition of “Seasons of Love.” There were some starts and stops, including Taye Diggs occasionally forgetting his lyrics as he read off of his phone, but the cast kept receiving standing ovations throughout. 

At the reunion — which happened to take place on the birthday of Larson’s late father, Allan Larson — the cast reminisced about their Off-Broadway run, how Larson would call them late at night to share new details of the writing process, hearing the music for the first time, the lottery line and even what it was like when Gilles Chiasson (Steve and others) when on for the first time in the role of Mark Cohen.

“I want Gilles to tell the story about the first time he subbed for Mark,” Daphne Rubin-Vega said to her costars. “Please! It was an epic, unforgettable moment.” 

“I could not remember the lyrics,” Chiasson revealed, explaining that he totally blanked out during the opening number of “Rent” and just sang gibberish on pitch. “And everyone was in a group behind me screaming words at me, and I was saying ‘Na-na’ for measures!” 

Heredia revealed that he went into his audition with little expectations, not even too committed to doing it. “When I first got the audition, I wasn’t really interested in doing [a musical],” he explained, saying that he didn’t see anyone on Broadway at the time who looked like him. “So I go into the audition, and I almost literally botched it by singing ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and ‘Amazing Grace.’ … And I go back to my job working from 12 to 9 o’clock in the morning, and I listened to [a tape with] my number. And I thought, ‘Oh, I have to do this.’” 

Pascal recalled hearing “Seasons of Love” for the first time. “It was the first song we all learned together collectively as a cast, and it was the first song that we sang together,” he said. “But I was so taken — and not in necessarily the best way — with these lyrics, which I thought were so weird, these numbers, this 500…  I was like, ‘This is so weird. Are we singing this? How could you sing along to this?’” 

Lo and behold, the musical continues to live on, and the cast will even be reuniting again for a 30th anniversary concert at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre in October. 

Later in the night, a mainstage performance featured all of the Broadway icons doing some of their staples, including O’Hara performing from The Light in the Piazza, Butz singing from Big Fish and Colella bringing down the house with a performance from Come From Away.

But the night didn’t end there. Matt Rodin hosted a late-night campfire singalong at which O’Hara made it a family affair by bringing her husband Greg Naughton and young daughter Charlotte onstage to sing with her. 

On Sunday, The Festival’s apprentices — aspiring musical theater performers who attend some of the best colleges across the country — brought the house down with an hourlong set of musical theater favorites and medleys that were truly unmatched. If anyone has any doubts about the future of musical theater, Broadway will certainly be in good hands if these handful of actors and actresses make their way to New York City after graduation. 

Longtime friends and collaborators Pascal and Rapp reunited for a mini concert of their own on Sunday, and Tom Kitt sang from his repertoire on the mainstage before the big show sent fans off with an epic grand finale. 

The Festival has already announced a return for 2027, so if you missed out this year, Broadway will be back for more.

Photo Credit: Michaelah Reynolds, Austin Ruffer

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