YORK Theatre Royal associate producer Liam Evans-Ford is to become Welsh company Theatr Clwyd’s first executive director.

Liam has been instrumental in the Theatre Royal's £6 million capital redevelopment, leading the project on business continuity, planning and delivery.

As a key player in the senior management team, among his progressive achievements he has developed the theatre’s commercial potential through the filming and cinema release of artistic director Damian Cruden's 2015 production of The Railway Children.

In 2012, he was community producer for the £1.3 million production of the York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens; a year later, he held the same post for the site-specific Blood + Chocolate on the city-centre streets of York for the Pilot Theatre, Slung Low and Theatre Royal co-production.

Damian Cruden praised Liam's contribution, saying: "In his time here, Liam has forged strong relationships with members of the community, helping us to open the door to more people and letting people feel genuine ownership of our organisation. He will be much missed but we are so happy to see he’s got such a great job to move into."

Liam first made his mark on the Yorkshire theatre scene with a decade of Sprite Productions' outdoor Shakespeare productions in the grounds of Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, and he also brought his ground-breaking London theatre project The Factory to North Yorkshire to perform Hamlet.

He has applied his fight direction skills to innumerable Theatre Royal productions and he has appeared on stage too. Not only in Sprite shows, but also as the brain-damaged Adam Rickerby in a comic tour de force in Last Train To Scarborough at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in May 2014, and as an American war correspondent in Slung Low's The White Whale at the Leeds Dock in September that year. You may even have seen him dressed as a "Disappointed Cucumber" in a Subway food advert in 2008.

He will take up his new post at the Mold theatre in north east Wales in early August, from when he will work with artistic director Tamara Harvey to develop creative partnerships and build both Theatr Clwyd's revenue streams and its community role. Harvey has described Liam as a "brilliant arts leader", a testimonial that all who have worked with Liam in York and Ripley would agree.