Emma Stenning to step down from the Bristol Old Vic

Emma Stenning, chief executive of the Bristol Old Vic, is to step down from her position at the theatre.

Stenning has worked at the Bristol Old Vic alongside artistic director Tom Morris for nine years since 2009.

The theatre opens its multi-million pound refurbishment in September, which Stenning has overseen. She leaves the theatre to become executive director of Soulpepper Theatre Company in Toronto.

Stenning was previously head of producing at Manchester International Festival and head of theatre at Arts Council England. She was executive director of Battersea Arts Centre between 2002 and 2005 alongside Morris, who was artistic director.

She said: "It is an enormous honour to be invited to take up this role… It is a wrench to leave both the theatre and the city of Bristol, as I have fallen in love with both over the past nine years. A part of me will always live here. But at the same time, the reopening of the renewed theatre is the perfect moment to embrace a new challenge."

Morris commented: "This is an amazing opportunity for the brilliant Emma Stenning whose talents, quite rightly, have been recognised internationally. Hers has been the steady hand on the tiller of the business through all our creative successes of the last nine years: hers have been the skills which have delivered the radical refurbishment of the building on time and on budget, reopening this September."