In an era of 3-D movie technology and superhero action films, the Festival of New American Musicals strives to showcase one of America’s most unique and longstanding traditions.

Now in its third year, the festival, which kicks off with a fundraising party on Sunday and runs through August, hosts over 30 events from Ventura to San Diego. These events include staged readings, workshops, full productions, master classes, cabaret events and concerts. This year, there will even be an Internet show, “The Sunset Players,” which airs on its own YouTube channel.

“The mission of the festival is to support the creation of new musicals, the performance of new musicals and build the audience for the future,” said Bob Klein, co-executive producer for the festival. According to Klein, productions in the festival must be either new musicals or ones that have not been performed in Southern California before. Tickets for the shows can be purchased online through the festival’s website.

The festival’s executive producers include Marcia Seligson and Linda Shusett, along with Klein. In 1995, Seligson started Reprise! Broadway’s Best, an organization whose goal was to produce rarely revived classic American musicals. Klein and Seligson worked closely at this organization for 10 years.

With the appearance of shows like “Spring Awakening,” “High School Musical” and, more recently, “Glee,” the festival’s executive producers began to recognize that musical theater was emerging anew among popular culture.

“At the end of the 10 years, we determined that there’s more excitement in new musicals than there was in revivals and we wanted to do something about it, so we started a new organization called the Festival. We decided that we would just go far and wide and talk to big theaters and small theaters and colleges and high schools and not limit ourselves just to Los Angeles,” Klein said.

“We wanted to involve as many organizations and as many people as possible in celebrating the fact that American musical theater is back,” Klein added.

With this goal in mind, the festival has grown substantially since its premiere in 2008, with audiences totaling to about 350,000 after the festival’s second run in 2009.

“It started with a germ and then it just grew and it keeps growing and changing,” Seligson said.

Throughout this substantial growth, one of the festival’s main goals has been to enhance educational outreach.

“Our interest in reaching out to people of all generations, of all ages, is quite a deep commitment for us,” Seligson said.

The festival’s efforts to maintain educational outreach are especially important to second-year theater student Hunter Bird. As a first-year, Bird, who has an emphasis in musical theater and directing, started his own theater company, Act III Theatre Ensemble, which performed “The Wild Party” as a preview for the festival in 2009.

Although he is not producing a show for the Festival this year, Bird has remained very involved, serving as the event coordinator for the executive board and planning educational outreach events.

“What we’re doing is essentially cultivating the next generation of not only theater practitioners, but audience members, too,” Bird said. “What audience will we have if we don’t have an educational outreach component? Theater will die out as something that people will want to go to. I think that is a definite danger in not recognizing educational outreach from both the Festival of New American Musicals’ perspective and from Act III’s perspective.”

This year, Bird worked closely with Klein to create The Academy for Young Performers, a program that organizes events for professionals to train students in things like vocal performance, choreography and the writing and creation of musicals.

“I think that’s one of the most exciting things that’s happening ­– the fact that kids of all ages everywhere are getting more interested in getting on stage and singing and dancing and writing for musical theater, and we want to help that along. So we’re doing everything we can. The Academy is our main vehicle,” Klein said.

Using programs like the academy, a new partnership with the New York Musical Theatre Festival, and the production of new shows, the Festival of New American Musicals strives to cultivate the growing national interest in musical theater.

“You look at things right now like ‘Wicked’ and the immense popularity that that’s garnered and judge it as we will, and believe me, I do judge it, but ‘High School Musical,’ you can’t deny the success of that,” Bird said. “With the resurgence of all of those things coming to mainstream culture, I think there’s a really exciting opportunity in the next 15 to 20 years of seeing musical theater move back into the mainstream entertainment. And I’m just really excited to be a part of that.”