Rich Cowden is jumping on a glacier wearing track shoes.

The lifelong administrator, educator and theater director is the new executive producer of the city-owned Aurora Fox Arts Center, ending a hiring saga that had stretched to 14 months. After an extended period of creative dormancy at the 39-year-old Fox, Cowden hit the ground running on Tuesday.

“In terms of moving forward, I just want to stand on top of that big Fox marquee on East Colfax and shout to the world that we are going to stabilize,” said Cowden, who has spent the past two years as general manager and executive director of the JCC Mizel Arts and Culture Center.

Cowden will now serve as both the lead financial administrator and artistic gatekeeper of a major arts facility with deep bureaucratic arteries that run directly to the city of Aurora.

Financial and artistic vision are often anachronistic specialties that rarely suit the same brain, but Cowden said the diversity of his experience makes him uniquely suited for the challenge of running the Fox’s 242-seat mainstage theater and its 72-seat studio at 9900 E. Colfax Ave.

“I’m either the ultimate inside-outsider or the ultimate outside-insider,” Cowden said. “I have produced and directed, but I’ve also been an administrator. I know how to run budgets. I know marketing. I know community and media relations. But what I also bring to the job are my energy and vision.”

Cowden replaces Helen R. Murray, who blew into town in December 2017 and ran the Fox like her own private Off-Broadway playground, which made for some thrillingly off-beat creative offerings that often played to small houses. The city’s annual report has cited underperforming ticket sales at the Fox since at least 2019.

“The goal is to find that sweet spot between work that is challenging and work that people haven’t seen before – while also putting work on the stage that is interesting to people because they have heard of it before,” Cowden said. “To me, the key is finding a balance.

“Now, are we going to find that balance right away? I would be completely full of it if I were to say yes. That is going to take a few seasons.”

During the prolonged search, which was further extended when two candidates declined the offer, the city announced that the Fox would be shifting to operating on a calendar-year basis, both artistically and financially. (Most theaters traditionally launch their seasons in the fall.) To accommodate that change, 2023 was designated “The Fox Interlude,” during which programming has focused mostly on small concerts in the studio theater, where the Fox will open the intimate musical “Blues in the Night” on Sept. 22.

The 2024 season announcement, which was made back in May, included a bold (and unattributed) commitment to produce August Wilson’s entire 10-play “The American Century Cycle,” which is a decade-by-decade look at the Black experience in Pittsburgh throughout the 20th century.

The new era opens Feb. 3 with “Art,” the 1994 Tony Award-winning best play by Yasmina Reza; followed by Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean;” “The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical,” a family friendly fantasy adventure based on Rick Riordan’s books; Jules Verne’s classic “Around the World in 80 Days;” and the regional premiere of “Ebenezer Scrooge’s Big Christmas Show!” All were chosen before Cowden’s hiring.

“One of the things I really appreciate about the season is that it’s trying to find that balance,” said Cowden, noting that “Percy Jackson” will be built around a literacy partnership with the Aurora Public Library, and that much of the season is family friendly.

Three finalists (all locally based) were allowed to make presentations before city officials, and Cowden said his focused on connection.

“That is to say, how do we use the Fox to connect different ideas, different concepts, different people, different businesses and different interests throughout the city and region?” he said. “Yes, we want to do exemplary, professional work, but that is only one part of the puzzle. The other part is, how do we bring back our audience? And how do we bring in new audiences? How do we challenge people without turning them off? How do we present a season every year that people can get excited about?”

Cowden’s hiring was announced by Aurora Director of Library and Cultural Services Midori Clark, who said Cowden’s “vast expertise in all aspects of theater production, along with his teaching experience, makes him a well-rounded leader and visionary for the Aurora Fox.”

Cowden came to Colorado as a middle-schooler when his Madison Avenue dad ditched the New York rat race to open an advertising agency in Grand Junction. Cowden’s life changed in seventh grade at East Junior High School, “a period of my life where I was choosing to use my powers for evil rather than good,” he said with a laugh.

“I was walking past auditions in the cafeteria for ‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,’ and I can’t explain why, but it froze me in my tracks. Something in my head said, ‘I can do that.’” The teacher had Cowden sing a song from the show, then said, “Where the hell have you been?”

“And from that moment on,” Cowden said, “I always knew that I would spend my life doing this somehow.”

Cowden graduated from Colorado Mesa University and earned his master’s degree from the Ohio University School of Theatre. His teaching credits include Mesa (where he headed the Department of Theatre Arts from 2006-10), Metropolitan State University Denver, and Castleton (Vt.) University.

He has directed locally for the late Edge, Greenshoe and Roundfish theater companies, as well as The Candlelight in Johnstown (“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”). He assisted Anthony Powell directing the Lebanese hostage drama “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” for the DCPA Theatre Company in 1995. Acting credits include playing Macheath in “The Threepenny Opera” at Miners Alley Playhouse in Golden.

Cowden was executive director of Colorado Conservatory of Dance from 2017-21. At the Mizel Center, Cowden said his successes included audience development, fundraising and financial oversight; as well as restoring key programs like the Jewish Film Festival, the Wolf Theatre Academy and the Denver Children’s Theatre.

The city did not announce Cowden’s salary, but Murray was paid $73,692 in 2020, according to public records. The Fox’s annual budget is about $1.7 million and employs 10 full-time workers.

Cowden has been married to wife Jessica for 20 years and is the father of four children: Molly, Margo, Liam and Finn, who range in age from 10 to 26. That all four have Irish names offers a clue to Cowden’s literary heroes, including Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Martin McDonagh, Englishman Danny Boyle and, for good measure, American Sam Shepard.

Asked his personal jam, Cowden said, “everything is my jam – but I really love high-energy, high impact, high-commitment work, whether that’s in music or theater or film. I’m an adrenaline junkie.” When pressed asked to cite one of his most meaningful creative experiences, he chose a Colorado Mesa production of “The Who’s Tommy.”

Cowden said his primary goal is to have the surrounding neighborhood embrace the Fox as the community’s theater.

“I want folks to feel welcome here regardless of their background, their cultural identity, their economic status or even their level of interest in theater,” he said. “What really drives me is getting people who think they hate theater into the building and then having them go, ‘I thought I hate theater – but I liked that theater.’”