Hamilton born Robert Missen has had a long and distinguished career in the Canadian performing arts as artists manager, agent, producer and promoter. His artists, who represent some of Canada’s most distinguished performers, have included Maureen Forrester, Ben Heppner, Veronica Tennant, Sylvia Tyson, Stuart McLean, Jackie Richardson, Louise Pitre, Michael Burgess, and the Elmer Iseler Singers.
As a theatrical producer he is particularly proud of the 1997 national touring presentation of Timothy Findley’s Piano Man’s Daughter, featuring Mr. Findley, Veronica Tennant, Sylvia Tyson and Joe Sealy. In addition to touring productions of Jim Betts’ Colours in the Storm, Greg Robic’s Clouds, and Ain’t Misbehavin’, he co-produced the highly successful Gravenhurst Opera House centenary production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever featuring the Follows Family in 2001.
He produced A.R Gurney’s Love Letters in Gravenhurst in the summer of 2014 with Marilyn Lightstone and Cedric Smith. He is currently developing a play with music with the acclaimed Canadian theatre director Peter Hinton, which is based on the poems and letters of World War One poet Wilfred Owen.
In April 2016, he produced the first of two national tours celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Men of the Deeps, the legendary Cape Breton coal miners’ choir, with whom he has had a very congenial association for over twenty years. In January 2017 he launched Some Enchanted Evening, a celebration of 150 years of musical theatre and operetta starring Ben Heppner, Rebecca Caine, Jean Stilwell, Gary Relyea and David Warrack. It toured across southern Ontario. In July 2018 he launches O Happy Day, a new gospel attraction featuring Ben Heppner and the Toronto Mass Choir.
June 2018 will mark the fourth annual Lowville Festival, “a festival of all the arts for the artist in all of us”, which takes place in the majestic Escarpment country of north Burlington. Robert serves as Founding Co-Artistic Director. He is also a Founding Board Member of the newly launched Arts and Culture Council of Burlington.