Weather 
The Hutton Company Brick Works literally built New York brick by brick. For over a century, thousands of brickmakers mixed, molded, dried and baked the city’s most essential building blocks on a 100-acre site along the banks of the Hudson River, in the city of Kingston. Look inside the walls of the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, the Cloisters and many other New York landmarks, and you will find a brick bearing the Hutton stamp.
The kilns went cold in 1980, and the yards sat in ruins for decades. But when Broadway enthusiast Joshua Saltman first saw the old brickyard, he knew this was the missing block for building his own grand vision: a Broadway “Woodstock” — just down the road from where the original festival took place.
“The area where there’s going to be performances is built on a landfill of millions of broken, discarded bricks. It feels historic,” he told The Post in the days leading up to The Festival — aka Broadway Fest — his one-of-a-kind, three-day theater extravaganza taking place next weekend.
Can he move 42nd Street a hundred miles north for the weekend? And will audiences come?
The Festival’s main pavilion stage sits beneath the roof of one of the original factory buildings. Two other stages, along with dining venues, campfire grounds and a “stage door” area for autographs, are planned among the site’s hulking ruins. On one side, derelict kiln sheds serve as an industrial backdrop. On another, the gantry crane that once loaded pallets of bricks onto barges still reaches out into the river.
The revitalized Hutton Brickyards — recast in recent years as a luxury venue — is a fittingly unexpected setting for what will be a music-filled “weekend in the country,” as The Festival is billing its Friday-night opener. The Festival’s VIP talent is star-studded: Scheduled singers include Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson and Brian Stokes Mitchell.
Starting Friday afternoon, more than 40 Broadway personalities will perform some three dozen shows across three separate stages, including several musical previews, ending in Broadway “raves,” piano-bar “hijinks” and campfire singalongs.
Cabins throughout the site and other local accommodations will house the hundreds of staffers — dancers, musicians, stage managers, lighting crew, video crew, sound crew — that must be brought in to mount the unprecedented multistage event in this small town that was, for a brief moment in 1777, the state’s first capital. Shuttle buses are scheduled to run to and from area hotels and offsite parking throughout the weekend for the thousands of ticket-buyers planning to attend.
The founder and main backer of The Festival, Saltman, is an unlikely impresario. Walking around Zabar’s, he easily blends into the Upper West Side crowd. Now 56 years old, he is a Broadway obsessive with a self-deprecating veneer. He is also my wife’s cousin with an eye on the bottom line. (Despite years of festive family reunions at Barney Greengrass, we still had to buy our own tickets to his festival.)
A native of southern California, Saltman attended Columbia College and Law School. During his studies — he describes law school as a low point in his young life — Broadway became a second home. “It became a bit of a refuge for me,” he says. Jerry Zaks’ Tony Award-winning revival of “Guys and Dolls,” which ran on Broadway from 1992 to 1995, proved to be a particular lifeline.
“Who knew that ‘Guys and Dolls’ was such a fun thing? That was a watershed moment for me. I feel like there’s no better sort of well-crafted songs than the American Songbook,” he says.
After beginning his legal career in New York, Saltman moved to Los Angeles to join Disney as in-house counsel. Still, Broadway kept bringing him back. Over the years, he accompanied friends to California’s Coachella Festival. He also vacationed with his wife, Jill, on Broadway cruises. Along the way, he wondered if his interests in festivals and Broadway could somehow be combined.
“We do these rituals that give our life meaning,” he explains. “The experiential nature of being able to go do something that is a destination, immersive, and to see music and learn music and experience things with like-minded people — that kind of setting became very appealing. I was with my friends all sitting around one year and I remember saying, ‘What if we did a Coachella for Broadway?’ We joked about it. Mandy Patinkin instead of Radiohead.”
Saltman says he was also feeling his age at the pop festivals. “As I got older, the music got younger, and so I’m like, I don’t need to wait till 11p.m. to see Ariana Grande. She doesn’t want me there.”
As his idea for a Broadway festival took hold, Saltman first pitched it inside Disney. “I called it ‘Mous-chella.’ It never got traction.”
After working on his idea for a decade, he struck out this year on his own to build a production team of festival and Broadway veterans with producer David Schwartz and directors Jerry Mitchell and DB Bonds.
He also reached out to Adam Pascal, a star from the original cast of “Rent” (and one of those Broadway-cruise performers). Pascal, it turns out, is still in touch with the original cast. “They have a text chain,” Saltman says. A 30th anniversary “Rent” reunion became the anchor for The Festival’s Saturday show.
“It’s going to be very emotional,” Saltman says. “Adam emailed me the other day. He’s like, the ‘Rent’ reunion’s an hour. Can we have an hour and a half?”
The roster grew from there. When Saltman learned McDonald could only join on Sunday, he extended the initial schedule from two days to three. His musical supervisor, Dan Lipton, also reached out to each performer to see what they would like to sing, and with whom.
“I’m like, okay, yes, yes, yes, ‘Suddenly, Seymour’ is in there,” Saltman says. “Kelli O’Hara and her daughter are going to sing a song together. Kelli and Renée are going to sing a beautiful duet from ‘Carousel.’ Adam Pascal, Lauren Patten, Jenn Colella and Norbert Leo Butz are going to do Crosby, Stills & Nash. Chris Jackson from ‘Hamilton’ is going to sing some James Taylor. The songs are incredible.”
I suggest that seeing it come together must be exciting. “Exciting for you, terrifying for me,” Saltman says between rehearsals with choreographer Jon Rua and venue tours as his cellphone goes off.
“It is so many logistics, the transportation and housing infrastructure for all of the people coming up.” He was still deciding where to put the step-and-repeat for photo shoots.
Meanwhile, Karl Slovin, the owner and developer of Hutton Brickyards, says The Festival is “exactly the kind of thing we built this place to make possible.”
The Festival is a seven-figure gamble. Saltman says he expects to sell 2,500 tickets. Nearly 2,000 weekend passes have already been purchased at the time of writing, ranging from $400 for general admission to $1,500 for VIP access. Limited day tickets are also available. But a little back-of-napkin math reveals it’s unlikely he turns a profit.
Saltman confirms this. He says he will not make back his investment. He just hopes to build enough goodwill among Broadway audiences and performers that they will want to come back another year. “This can easily be profitable. It’s just going to take me a couple years to get there.”
“It’s a crazy idea, because it’s a tremendous personal expense to me,” he says. “You have to bring in everything. So I’m bringing in three stages. I’m bringing in lighting and sound and rigging and massive video screens. I got to bring in 3,500 chairs, right? I do. That’s a lot of chairs. And I’ll be housing 150 people.”
He jokes his parents are still not quite on board with the passion project. “I think my father might be calling in complaints to Page Six.”
James Panero is executive editor of The New Criterion.
