PuSh Festival Welcomes New Managing Director
April 01, 2014
Today the Board of Directors of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Society announced the appointment of Roxanne Duncan as the new Managing Director, taking over from Minna Schendlinger. Roxanne will begin in her role on June 2.
Roxanne joins the PuSh Festival team from The Theatre Centre in Toronto, where she has been the Managing Director since 2010. Her career began in Edinburgh in 2005 working with Aurora Nova and Paul Lucas Productions. In 2007 she moved to Toronto where she worked with Volcano Theatre and Peggy Baker Dance Projects. Since then Duncan has worked with Toronto companies Acting Up Stage, Company Theatre, Dreamwalker Dance, Soulpepper and Why Not Theatre.
PuSh Festival’s Artistic & Executive Director Norman Armour said, “Roxanne comes to Vancouver with a tremendous range of skills, knowledge and work experiences. She is the perfect complement to what PuSh is embarking upon in the next stage of its life. Roxanne has been a key figure at The Theatre Centre in building what is an inspiring organization and a leader in the Canadian independent theatre scene—not the least for having just opened a brilliant new facility to cap off a $6.2 million capital campaign. Her experience with the producing and touring side of the performing arts equation is a much-valued perspective that reflects PuSh’s ongoing commitment to artists and their work. I look forward to introducing Roxanne to our community, and to our colleagues welcoming her to her new home.”
From Toronto Roxanne said of her upcoming move to the PuSh Festival and Vancouver, “I am thrilled to be joining the remarkable team at PuSh, a festival I have admired for many years. The opportunity to help lead this vital organization into a new phase of operations is a tremendous one. At The Theatre Centre, I had the opportunity to work with a number of Vancouver artists, who are making some of the most interesting work in the country right now. I look forward to learning more about the city’s thriving artistic community—and I’m pretty excited about the ocean too.”
“Roxanne is coming to the PuSh Festival as we embark on our second decade of bringing innovative and collaborative performing arts to Vancouver,” said Christianne Wilhelmson, the PuSh Festival’s President-elect and member of the search committee. “As we move our operations into the City of Vancouver-leased cultural amenity space at the CBC Vancouver Broadcast Centre, we are excited that someone with Roxanne’s energy and vision will be joining our leadership team and we know she’ll help us build on our years of success just as she did with The Theatre Centre in Toronto.”
In the role of the PuSh Festival’s administrative leadership, Roxanne joins the thriving $1.8 million organization on the heels of our successful 10th anniversary festival in January. As Managing Director, she will be responsible for the overall management and operational activities of the society, and oversees festival operations, day-to-day financial and human resource management.
PuSh’s founding Managing Director Minna Schendlinger, who has held the position since 2005, announced her planned spring departure in November 2013. A search committee was formed and the process got underway to hire a new Managing Director in the winter.