Perfect for the job he never wanted

Scapa's head knows how to get your average Joe Blogg's bum on the seat at performing arts, writes GILBERT WONG, arts editor.

Alan Smythe didn't want the job, but he got it anyway. Best-known as an entertainment impresario, Smythe will run Auckland's new cultural juggernaut, the School of Creative and Performing Arts (Scapa) at the University of Auckland.

After a worldwide search for a director to head the school housed in the historic building at 74 Shortland St, Smythe was asked just before Christmas if he would take the job .

"It wasn't my idea at all, it was miles away from my thinking at the time," said Smythe last week in the midst of preparations for the February 3 Starlight Symphony public concert in the Domain.

Smythe's track record with Christmas in the Park, Opera in the Park, and lavish, large-scale opera productions of Carmen and La Traviata at North Shore Stadium mean the public knows the name and that he is tuned into the real world of producing extravaganzas for ordinary punters.

Smythe says: "I don't want to sound egotistical, but Scapa needs to build a profile and that's what I do. What they seemed to be looking for was a bridge between the university and the real world. In terms of audiences I have put together the biggest performing arts events in the country."

Press him about details, and he prefers to extol Shortland St's legacy as a radio and television broadcast studio built in 1935. After a $7 million-plus refurbishment the building opens on February 22 as the Kenneth Myers Centre.

"There's something exciting about the original purpose, the look of the building, the big radio antenna that's still there. We can put some Broadway lights up there. I guess I've been thinking visually about the job."

Smythe's forte is ideas not details and in conversation he continually throws them into the mix. "We could do the Fame thing," he says, suggesting a reality television project like The Big Time that screened before Christmas, following five Scapa students and using the television studies students to film and edit the programme for airing.

As he says, "I'm not an academic. I'm unashamedly populist and I think that might be why I have the job."

The school is a novel creature for the university, bringing together students from music performance, ethnomusiology, dance, film, theatre, television and media studies and arts management: disciplines that were part of departments ranging from art history, English and the schools of music and business.

Smythe once worked as a junior lecturer in the English department, before heading overseas to become involved in a diverse range of occupations from publisher to film scriptwriter to jobbing musician as a cellist for the Paris Opera and Folies-Bergere.

What he will say about his role as director of Scapa is that there will not be room for elitism. "Yeah, I know the disciplines in there and I already want to make changes to the way certain things are approached. What the university teaches these kids at a performing arts school has to reflect the real world."

Smythe plans to bring in practitioners to guest lecture and involve students in joint projects. His role as director leaves him free to continue his work as an impresario.

None of this explains why he took the job. The simple answer is his "level of impatience." He bores easily. Smythe smiles, as he does continually, "I don't like these words, but I do like the challenge."

The immediate challenge is the staging of the Kenneth Myers Centre opening on February 22. True to form, Smythe is hatching plans that he reckons will blow the audience away.