Aurora Fox Theater’s Colorful History

Driving down East Colfax Avenue, cruisers can see a flash of teal from nearly a mile away. It’s been there for almost half a century, and gives those stuck in rush hour traffic something to look at and feel a brief second of happiness. But the beautiful cap of the Aurora Fox Theater’s marquee houses something more than a glimpse of joy at 5:30 p.m.

The Aurora Fox Theater, now home to Aurora’s premier performing arts center, has a history as eclectic as its carpeting, which is pretty fierce. Opening with a parade on October 30, 1946, The Fox was one of Aurora’s first indoor cinemas, featuring stadium seating decades before multiplexes hopped on the trend. Proclaimed the “theater of tomorrow” by local publications, it even included a germ-killing air-filtration system.

It had been more than a decade since the closure of The Hollywood, Aurora’s original movie theater, which shuttered its doors in 1936 following only a decade of business. Residents had to travel to Denver in order to comfortably catch a flick before the Fox’s opening.

Scott Williams, director of the Aurora History Museum, says the venue was much more than a movie theater that showed Disney cartoons and Hollywood epics. It also hosted events like cooking demonstrations and the Miss Aurora contest, located in the heart of the city’s original downtown.

Right after World War II in 1946, Scott says, the City of Aurora was issuing around 100 building permits each month, causing the population to skyrocket. By 1948, the population had reached 10,000.

“At that time, when Aurora was growing, that was where the growth was,” he explained. “And with its Colfax location, we can all agree that’s a main thoroughfare.”

Building around an auditorium uniquely constructed from an army Quonset hut obtained through the federal government, architect Charles D. Strong fashioned the Fox into an art-deco dream. The Quonset structure, rounded with corrugated metal, was a common architectural element following the end of the war, as surplus huts were sold for both commercial and residential use.

The Fox continued a successful run as a movie theatre well into the 1970s, when multiplex cinemas began to draw larger crowds. By the end of the decade, the Fox Theater had been reduced to a cheap theater playing B-movies until an outside fire ravaged its screen and many of its features in 1981, rendering the space unusable.

Fixing the Fox

Alice Lee Main, who served as the city’s cultural services division manager, essentially managed all the arts programs in Aurora for 42 years until recently. In those days, arts productions in Aurora like the symphony, choral, and theatrical performances were held in school auditoriums and even a local senior center.

She says performances would take place on platforms in lunchrooms where six lights would be hooked up to a stove in the kitchen.

“Everything was very makeshift,” Alice Lee said. “We didn’t have a home, and people had a hard time finding us.”

After the fire at the Fox, the company that owned it had no interest in fixing the theater, so the Aurora Arts and Humanities Council (which was formed as a non-profit in 1977), convinced the city to purchase the venue, Alice explains. Money was then raised to help restore the structure to maintain its original art-deco style. Volunteers would spend Saturdays gutting the Fox’s burned remains.

Alice Lee was involved in the restoration, helping to design and preserve as much of the original atmosphere that remained after the fire. Small details like bathroom signs became vintage features in the building’s restructuring. The pattern on the walls was reintroduced into the Fox’s current carpeting. The outside of the building was preserved enough so that it could be named a historic landmark, which it later was in 1987.

“Citizens were out there raising money as well as donating their time,” Alice Lee recalled. “It was a real community effort to turn it into an arts facility.”

After a few years of work, the Aurora Fox Arts Center officially opened in early March of 1985, featuring a red carpet ceremony and city council members arriving in 1940s cars.

“We made the whole weekend a big, splashy deal…and now the [arts] had a home.”

But even after opening, it took years to collect enough money to repair and light the iconic marquee. Volunteers sold stuffed foxes to raise funds, Alice says.

While the Aurora Fox Arts Center is host to primarily theatrical productions nowadays, the venue would host performances from dance companies, symphonies and choral groups until more appropriate venues became available.

Building a Community

Bobbie Ruben, who served as the Fox’s patron services manager for the past 27 years, retired last year but still remains a regular.

She was first attracted to the Fox as a “stage mom,” taking her 10-year-old daughter to perform in children’s theatre productions in the 1980s. Her participation grew from ushering and backstage help to a part-time gig that flourished from there.

“When I first started, the Fox was just a small community-style theater,” Bobbie said. “It kept growing and getting stronger…then all of a sudden, we were one of the bigger competitive theaters in town.”

She credits the theater’s growth to its faithful subscribers and patrons along with acclaimed local directors like Terry Dodd and John Ashton helming high-quality productions featuring popular local talent.

Bobbie says, throughout the years, the production values grew, and the shows became edgier. Productions with more cultural significance took focus, and the venue appealed to larger audiences.

A turning point, she remembered, was when the Fox began to incorporate regional premieres into its seasons in the early 2000s. At that point, the arts center began to look for more unique shows to feature on its main stage as well as its new Studio theatre, which opened in 2003 as a black box style venue. The Studio was originally intended as a place for rehearsals and classes, but eventually was outfitted for performances. The Fox became an Equity house in 2009, meaning the company could hire theatrical professionals of a higher caliber for an agreed wage.

Throughout the years, the Aurora Fox’s venues have also played host to several other companies, notably including Ignite Theatre, which began performing at the Fox in 2009 until their 31st and final production this past winter. Ignite focused on producing mainly contemporary musicals that were either under-produced or fresh on the scene.

More recently, the Fox’s technical skills have been showcased on a grander scale, including a field of flowers concealed under the stage in the musical Big Fish as well as a full-scale rotating bus during their latest production, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. both shows were regional premieres for the company.

But daffodils and drag queens have found their home alongside an array of culture coming up at the Fox, including the return of Hi-Hat Hattie (which last played there in 2004), the story of the first black performer to win an Oscar. Their upcoming 33rd season also includes the story of a transgender rocker (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), a play centered around Latina immigrants (Real Women Have Curves), and a rock musical about a young African American’s artistic journey of self-discovery in Europe (Passing Strange).

It looks like this theater of tomorrow has set the stage for plenty more of them.