Next role actor’s biggest

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This article was published 18/01/2024 (965 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Spenser Payne was eight years old, she took her first class at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People. In her debut performance, she played an odd little alien who froze up whenever a flashlight flickered on.

“I think that was the first time I felt like I belonged. It was the first time I felt I could be my naturally weird and creative self,” she says.

Then, she never really left. Payne, 34, has spent the bulk of her professional life in the colourful, whimsical theatre at the Forks, teaching kids how to own the stage, craft a joke and share the spotlight.

Now, she gets to run the show.

On Jan. 8, Payne started her term as MTYP’s school director — a dream job for a crafty, giggly theatre nerd who quoted Much Ado About Nothing in her wedding vows.

The daughter of a high school theatre teacher and an early childhood educator, Payne will oversee MTYP’s slate of educational programming for toddlers, elementary students and high schoolers.

MTYP has over 1,500 students enrolled, including in its native youth theatre and after-school leaders programs. During the 2023-2024 season, the organization’s drama outreach program will reach over 3,200 learners.

For Payne, who taught drama outreach for 10 years with MTYP and currently teaches children with autism in the organization’s I Can Pretend program, the new gig feels like it was meant to be.

“I know the school inside and out. I was a student here, I am a teacher here, and my step-child just started taking classes here. I’m hoping I can use all that experience as a strength to create programming kids and parents both want,” she says.

Payne went to high school at Collège Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau, where her graduating class of 65 was too small to support a musical theatre program. That made MTYP’s after-school offerings all the more important, she says.

Outside of teaching, Payne is an experienced performer who has been in a number of Shakespeare in the Ruins’ productions, and in several iterations of the Robert Munsch shows at Prairie Theatre Exchange. As a clown, she is a member of the Bouffon troupe the Talentless Lumps, and is one half of the athletic clowning duo Maple and Sticky, as Sticky.

But her life as a performer started at MTYP, where she played that weird little alien under the direction of Susan Bohn, who is now the theatre’s front of house and facility manager. For several years, Payne’s first director has been a trusted colleague.

“Watching her grow and seeing things come full circle is so inspirational,” says Bohn, who remembers Payne as a supportive, positive kid with exuberance and an old soul. “The minute I heard the news (that Payne was director), there was almost a settling feeling, a confidence that felt like coming home.”

Taking over for former director Vern Thiessen, Payne’s immediate orders of business include preparing for MTYP’s ever-busy spring break programming, touching base with her colleagues and diving into the piles of paperwork her new position has given her.

Her long-term goal is to mentor colleagues, collaborate with students and help MTYP shape its programming to fit what students and parents want, she says.

“I want to teach that next generation of teachers that old theatre magic and have fun,” she says. “I hope I’m teaching the next theatre school director right now.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com