Paul Brobbel is pleased with what he’s achieved in just over a year as director at Uxbridge Arts and Culture but he’s got more ideas still to roll out.
He started the job in Howick in August last year, having returned to east Auckland from a position as Len Lye Curator at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery / Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth.
It was a homecoming for the Howick local who attended Elm Park School, Bucklands Beach Intermediate School and Macleans College.
“I’m thrilled particularly in the last six months,” Brobbel told the Times.
“The first half of the year was getting to grips and learning how everything is, and this year from February onward that’s when I started to feel the things I wanted to achieve were starting to happen.
“I think the amount of activity in the theatre, that’s something I really wanted to see, and a very active theatre programme.
“Getting music and performances back into Uxbridge and really pushing it as east Auckland’s live venue.”
Among his highlights this year is the Fridays@12 concert series, which gives local secondary school pupils the chance to perform music in front of a live audience.
“That concert series is as popular as it’s ever been,” Brobbel says.
“I was pleased to see the appetite for that is still there. In terms of the newer things that have come in, the launch of The Bridge, the singer-songwriters project we’re doing, that’s something I see as a real cornerstone of what we want to do here.
“To be able to do a singer-songwriter showcase every three months is not only something east Auckland needs, but I’m hoping it’s going to be a strong part of the Auckland music scene.”
One of the more unlikely events the centre has staged under Brobbel’s leadership is the recent Grand Slam Pro Wrestling show, which drew more than 100 people to the Uxbridge theatre.
“The wrestling was a huge success,” he says. “It was testing the waters and seeing what appetite there is for it.
“That technically wasn’t my idea. It came from the wider team and even I was a little ‘shook’ by the implications of bringing wrestling into an arts centre.
“But fundamentally it’s an art, it’s entertainment, and we had a really different audience for that.
“It was a very young audience of families with children and people who haven’t been here before.
“For me it was a real throwing-down-the-gauntlet to our audience and saying ‘you vote with your feet here, come to the things you like and we’ll do more of them’.
“If people want classical music or jazz they have to come to those things. My interest in the idea of the wrestling was to see how far we can stretch what the theatre can do.
“It’s fairly obvious what it should be doing, but there’s a whole world of entertainment and art out there that could be happening here in Howick that isn’t.
“I’m excited about the wider art world seeing Uxbridge as a viable venue for all sorts of crazy things.”
