PuSh Festival Welcomes New Managing Director
April 01, 2014
For immediate release: April 1, 2014
The Board of Directors of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival Society announces today the appointment of Roxanne Duncan as the new Managing Director, effective June 2, 2014.
Duncan 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.
Of this appointment, PuSh Festival’s Artistic & Executive Director Norman Armour says, “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.”
“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,” says Duncan of her move to the PuSh Festival and Vancouver.
“Roxanne is coming to the PuSh Festival as we embark on our second decade of bringing innovative and collaborative performing arts to Vancouver,” says 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, Duncan joins the thriving $1.8 million organization on the heels of its successful 10th anniversary festival in January. The Managing Director is responsible for the overall management and operational activities of the society, and oversees festival operations, day-to-day financial and human resource management. Duncan will help usher PuSh into a new period of expansion, with the move to the CBC Vancouver Broadcast Centre scheduled for this fall.
Duncan steps into the position previously held by Minna Schendlinger, PuSh’s Managing Director since 2005, who announced her planned spring departure in November.