Rosebud School of the Arts announces new Interim Education Director

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

Rosebud School of the Arts’ instructor Aaron Krogman has accepted the role of Interim Education Director, taking over from long-time Education Director Paul Muir, who is now RSA’s Executive Director.

Paul Muir came to Rosebud in 2000 as a Rosebud Theatre guest actor and became a Rosebud School of the Arts (RSA) instructor that fall. From 2002-2009, Muir and RSA Registrar Maki Van Dyke shared the role of RSA Education Director. After 2009, Muir carried that role alone.

Muir and Van Dyke restructured RSA’s programs, creating the one-year Certificate in Theatre Foundations, the two-year Diploma, and the Mentorship program which takes students through their fourth year.

Muir wanted students to have a “national and global perspective of theatre”, which led to establishing theatre study trips to Canada’s West Coast, to Toronto and New York, and to London, England.

“I also wanted to have a well-equipped stage where Mentorship students could practice their craft in front of a live audience,” he said. That resulted in the Rosebud Studio Stage and RSA’s Artist-in-Training programs.

RSA graduates now work professionally in live theatre and film across Canada and internationally.

In early 2020, RSA was without an Executive Director and was about to begin a national search. Then the pandemic hit.

Muir and five others formed RSA’s COVID team, to “lead the organization through this storm,” Muir said. In early 2021, Muir accepted the role of Executive Director, while continuing in the role of Education Director.

Since the pandemic, RSA enrollment is slowly recovering. 

“But the organization is back,” he said. “Our feet are set on solid rock, and the future is very optimistic.”

Aaron Krogman had joined RSA faculty in 2019, but he’d first come to Rosebud as a student in 2004, after being out of high school a few years.

At that point, “I had a whole bunch of desires, dreams and wishes but no clear path,” he said.

The following summer, he said, “I was complaining to my dad … still not knowing what to do with my life.”

“And (my dad) said, ‘What about Rosebud? I’ve always kind of seen you as an actor.’ I thought, my dad’s never said that to me before!”

He became a student at RSA that fall.

“It felt like the perfect fit for someone like me,” Krogman said. “There were things that I’d wanted to try, but I didn’t know how. … I discovered so much purpose for a person like me. With my challenges, gifts, hunger for story. It was such a great fit.”

Krogman graduated, staying on in Rosebud’s acting company until 2013. He also performed the role of Jesus in the Badlands Passion Play.

“I was in a lot of plays, and I learned a tonne,” he said. “The audience that came through the Opera House taught me so much.”

In 2013, Krogman and his wife, Ellie, moved to Edmonton, where he worked in Kings University’s drama program and discovered he had interest in teaching.

That took him to Vancouver’s Regent College for an M.A., then back to Kings to teach part-time. Then Paul Muir invited him to come and teach in Rosebud.

“Rosebud was a place that I loved,” Krogman said. “The people, the valley, the place, what happened here. And I received so much from it … I had to make a choice between Rosebud and what I thought was an opportunity at Kings. In the end, I just really felt drawn to Rosebud.”

In 2019, Krogman and his young family moved to Rosebud, and Krogman became RSA’s Head of Theatre Foundations.

“I remembered what it was like for me (as a student) and tried to facilitate that for students,” he said.

In January 2023, Krogman accepted the role of RSA’s Interim Education Director. Next summer, he expects a conversation about whether the role will become permanent.

“I’m mostly motivated by the opportunity to make space for and to find people just entering adulthood, who think storytelling is something they should make space for,” he said. “I’m particularly interested in coming alongside people who are unfolding, and they’re drawn to the power of story … the power of story we’re all drawn to, the transformation we all hunger for as a culture and as a province and then also as a body of Christ.”

Krogman offers a “big welcome” to everyone.

“We all have stories too that find their place in the big story,” he said. “I just want to be about … making more and more space for more people.”

“There’s more people that were like me in some way,” he said. “I needed a nudge. I needed to be found. So, I want to be part of that finding … there’s a place for everyone, and Rosebud fits a particular type of people very well.”

Krogman encourages us to look at the young people in our lives, and to know that we have the power to set trajectories for their lives.

“Sometimes it takes a nudge,” he said. “We have a job to do for each other.”