NEW YORK (AP) — It’s five o'clock in the morning in Rio de Janeiro on the day before Carnival, but little Pipito is not having a good time.

The 12-year-old has just witnessed the police chief kill a group of children on the steps of a church and is then surrounded by dancing spirits. His cries for help are ignored by a priest and a vendor — but not by a predatory drug dealer.

‘‘You’re one of us,’’ the boy is told, ominously.

He is then grabbed by the bad guy and two street kids as they tear through Rio, singing a song with lyrics that include: ‘‘You dream with the rats/you swim with the snail/the gutter’s your pillow/the city your jail.’’

Luckily, a guy named Scott Faris steps in.

‘‘That was great, you guys,’’ he says. ‘‘Fantastic.’’

Faris is director of ‘‘Rio,’’ one of the 30 entrants in this year’s New York Musical Theatre Festival, which kicks off next week. In a basement rehearsal space closer to the Port Authority than the slums of Rio, he and his team put the final touches on this ambitious musical.

‘‘Rio’’ is a reinvention of ‘‘Oliver Twist’’ set in modern-day Rio with a 12-person cast playing over 60 characters, including tourists, nuns, waiters, prostitutes, revelers and spirits.

The musical, with book, music and lyrics by Mitch Magonet and Joey Miller, has been germinating for eight years and has enticed quite a few actors into making their festival debut.

‘‘As an actor, getting to do something from scratch and create the role yourself is amazing,’’ says Tanesha Ross, who was in the recent national tour of ‘‘Hair’’ and is making her first festival bow. In ‘‘Rio,’’ the Spokane, Wash.-raised Ross plays a samba teacher and mother figure for Pipito. ‘‘I fall in love with the show more and more every day.’’

‘THE SUNDANCE FOR MUSICAL THEATER’

Since its inception in 2004, the festival has premiered more than 250 new musicals, some of which have gone on to a further life on or off Broadway, such as ‘‘Altar Boyz,’’ ‘'title of show’’ and the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘‘Next to Normal.’’

This year, the festival — traditionally held in the fall — makes its summer debut, avoiding competition from the start of the Broadway season and taking advantage of more empty theaters. An estimated 40,000 people attend the festival each year and all tickets are $25 or less.

The festival — called by the initials NYMF — provides shows with theater space, lights, sound equipment, front-of-house staffing and marketing — all key to emerging artists trying to mount resource-heavy musicals in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

‘‘This is pretty much like the Sundance for musical theater,’’ says Nik Walker, a 24-year-old from Boston who plays a drug dealer and love interest for Ross’ character in ‘‘Rio.’’

Walker, whose favorite novel just happens to be ‘‘Oliver Twist’’ and whose regional credits include ‘‘Miss Saigon’’ and ‘‘Into the Woods,’’ gravitated to the darker material in ‘‘Rio’’ — poverty, drugs and desperation. ‘‘I love pushing those kind of boundaries and seeing what bold storytelling can do to an audience,’’ he says.

He’s joined in that by fellow actors J. Manuel Santos, a 24-year-old Texan who was on Broadway in ‘‘West Side Story’’ and on NBC’s ‘‘Smash,’’ and Nicholas Gonzales, a 13-year-old playing Pipito who was in the national tour of ‘‘A Christmas Story, the Musical.’’

‘‘I want to be part of the next big thing,’’ says Santos.

‘AN INTERESTING RIDE’

The offerings this year are typically eclectic, scattered across several theaters in the city. There’s ‘‘Swing State,’’ a two-person musical about a born-again Christian kindergarten teacher and her gay, atheist chiropractor. There are musicals about James Joyce and Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

There’s a musical about a lovable chocolate-frosted doughnut with rainbow sprinkles called ‘‘Arnie the Doughnut,’’ a horror musical about a green serum that brings back the dead titled, ‘‘Re-Animator the Musical,’’ and another about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping called ‘‘Baby Case.’’ For those who like enclosed spaces, there’s a show about six strangers stuck between subway stations.