New RMTC executive director comes home

Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre announced the appointment of its next executive director Tuesday, bringing a Winnipeg-born and raised theatre pro back to his Prairie roots.

Evan Klassen, currently employed in the same role by the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., will return to Manitoba in August, taking the reins from outgoing executive director Camilla Holland, who is leaving the RMTC this summer after 13 seasons at the helm.

“I am so thrilled about this move for so many reasons,” says Klassen, who worked in the theatre’s box office and front of house as a teenager.

“I get this feeling every time I talk about it that I have to pinch myself. It’s an exciting move for me, my partner and our families, and professionally, it’s a dream come true.”

The news of Klassen’s hiring comes with the RMTC season in the midst of its run of local playwrights Trish Cooper and Sam Vint’s The Comeback, the final production of the 2023-24 season.

Before starting at the Grand in 2022, the co-producer of this season’s RMTC staging of Clue, Klassen spent four years as managing director of Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops, B.C., and four years as the director of artistic operations and production for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

“I get this feeling every time I talk about it that I have to pinch myself. It’s an exciting move for me, my partner and our families, and professionally, it’s a dream come true.”–Evan Klassen

But Klassen’s time in professional theatre began in 1998, when he would bus to Market Street for his shifts in the box office.

“I have this clear memory of (longtime artistic director) Steven Schipper coming by and asking, ‘How are we doing?’ and I, in my naiveté, said, ‘Oh, I’m doing well, Steven,’ when he was talking about tickets.”

The year before that, Klassen — whose parents, Richard and Karin Klassen, are former members of the WSO — remembers seeing a future for himself in theatre after watching the RMTC production of Jason Sherman’s None Is Too Many for young audiences.

“The set had these two lion statues with red eyes that glowed during serious parts,” he says.

The time in the box office helped pave the way for Klassen to become an apprentice stage manager for the 2002 mainstage production of Evita. He later worked across the city as a freelance stage manager, working on productions including The Drowsy Chaperone, Grumpy Old Men: The Musical and Gone with the Wind at RMTC and at venues including Rainbow Stage, the Manitoba Opera, the Shaw Festival and Theatre Calgary.

During the production of Grumpy Old Men in 2011, Klassen was in the building as Holland was being introduced to the staff and crew as the company’s new executive director.

Klassen credits Holland as a role model and mentor, and in 2019, when she won the Mallory Gilbert Leadership Award from the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, Holland named Klassen as the winner of the PACT’s Protegé award.

In a media release, Laurie Speers, the chair of the search committee for the executive director, said that Klassen “stood out for his warmth, collaborative and visionary leadership style, and his genuine and proven commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility.”

Kelly Thornton, the company’s artistic director, said that she was “thrilled to have found such a smart, compassionate and effective leader in Evan, and to welcome him as my new partner to help enact our vision for Royal MTC’s future.”

bem.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com