Emmy Award winning producer and popular local actor Robert Libbey will be the new managing director of Penobscot Theatre Company, the Bangor organization announced earlier this week. Libbey resigned earlier this month as executive director of The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth.

“This is an opportunity to be in a theater setting, which is where my strength is,” said Libbey. “I love the Grand. It’s a great place, and I think I left it in better condition than I found it. … But this feels like a really good fit. I’ve been involved with Penobscot Theatre since I was a teenager. I started here as an usher back in 1977. So it feels natural.”

A Bangor native, Libbey earned undergraduate degrees in theater and broadcasting and a graduate degree in business administration at the University of Maine. While a producer at Maine Public Television, he received an Emmy Award for his work on “Made in Maine.” Libbey served on the New England States Touring grant panel for The New England Foundation for The Arts, representing the Maine Arts Commission for two years.

Theater audiences know Libbey from his stagework with the Maine Shakespeare Festival, Penobscot Theatre, Acadia Repertory Theatre and The Theater at Monmouth. He is also a founding member of Ten Bucks Theatre Company in Brewer, has danced in “The Nutcracker” with Robinson Ballet Company and performed on screen as an extra in Stephen King’s “The Langoliers” and this year’s TV adaptation of Richard Russo’s novel “Empire Falls.”

Libbey is the second new appointment for the theater in two months. Scott R.C. Levy, an actor and director from New York, began his tenure last month as producing artistic director for the theater. The company is already in preproduction for its first show of the season “Picasso At The Lapin Agile,” which will run Sept. 21-Oct. 2 at the Bangor Opera House. For information about the season or the theater, call 942-3333 or visit www.penobscottheatre.org.