AURORA | For the first time in nearly three decades, a new face will soon be greeting Aurora theatergoers as they enter the lobby of the Aurora Fox Arts Center on East Colfax Avenue.
Bobbie Rubin, box office manager at the Aurora Fox for more than 27 years, is set to retire at the end of June.
Rubin’s retirement marks the end of a career at The Fox that began due to her daughter’s involvement with the youth theater program. Now, hundreds of productions, the addition of a studio theater to the east of the main stage and the arrival of one grandson later, Rubin says that she’ll miss her interactions with the cast, crew and patrons.
“I’ve worked with so many incredibly creative people over all these years: the casts, the designers and the directors — I’ve met so many wonderful people,” the Denver native and longtime Aurora resident says. “And all of the patrons, too — I’ve worked with our season ticket holders for all these years and I really know these people. That’s been really special.”
Rubin, who began her professional career as an elementary school teacher in Westminster, started at the Fox as a part-time box office and house assistant in the late 1980s, just a few years after the city purchased and renovated the building to house stage performances. The facility served as a movie theater for the first 30 years of its existence, until a fire ravaged the structure and forced it to shut down for several years.
Operations at the theater have continued to proliferate during Rubin’s time manning the ticket window, with regional recognition and ever-important season subscriptions increasing at a steady clip.
“The theater has really grown and the audiences have grown through those years, as well,” Rubin says.
The Fox saw a 26-percent increase in season subscriptions between 2014 and 2015, according to Charlie Packard, executive producer at the East Colfax theater.
Outside the theater, Rubin says that the area now known as the Aurora Cultural Arts District has helped the theater and the city emerge as an artisanal hub.
“It’s turned into a cultural center now,” she says.
Apart from the interactions with various crew members and Fox staffers, Rubin says that a brief interaction with an upstart U.S. Senator from Illinois about 10 years ago will also be a moment she will never forget.
“Barack Obama came to the theater around when he was first running for president to support a local senatorial campaign,” she says. “That was exciting, but he didn’t buy a ticket.”