Curtain call

Abe Bassett, founder of Wright State’s theatre program, and W. Stuart McDowell, current chair and artistic director for the Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures. (Photos by Chris Snyder)

After giving a talk to alumni on the behind-the-curtain history of Wright State University’s theatre program, Abe Bassett decided to share his knowledge with the world by writing “Producer’s Notes.”

The book is a vividly written personal history of a department that within 10 years of its founding became Ohio’s dominant undergraduate theatre program. It is today considered one of the nation’s top exclusively undergraduate theatre programs.

Bassett started the program in 1970 and was its director for 18 years.

“From the beginning, I was just amazed at the quality of the students that we had,” he said. “We really had some good young people — bright, intelligent, hard-working. They were the kernel that enabled us to grow.”

The department started in 1970 with two faculty members, six theatre courses and no facilities. By 1981, Wright State had 229 dance and theatre majors, eclipsing Ohio University’s 202 and more than the lowest six state universities combined. And more than 38,000 people attended Wright State plays that year.

Among the nuggets in “Producer’s Notes”:

• At one point in the 1970s, more than half of the students living in Hamilton Hall were theatre majors.
• When the Festival Playhouse was dedicated in 1974, a young Rob Lowe was one of the actors on the stage.
• In 1978, a 22-year-old Tom Hanks played Proteus in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” as part of a one-week presentation at Wright State of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival.

Bassett, who also taught acting, said good theatre professors end up bonding with their students.

“In fact, that’s necessary if you’re going to be an effective teacher in the arts because they have to trust you,” he said. “If your students don’t trust you, it doesn’t work. So you’ve got to build trust with them.”

And build confidence.

Abe Bassett founded the theatre program in 1970, left Wright State in 1988 to become dean of fine and performing arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne and retired in 1994.

“For an actor to go up before a group of fellow students and reveal what’s on the inside is scary,” Bassett said. “So you just have to bring people up to where they’re not afraid to reveal themselves and not be afraid of failure.”

Bassett was born in the small railroad-and-coal-mining town of Williamson, West Virginia, where his father operated a confectionary store.

“Sometimes he would take a mid-afternoon break and go to the movies and take me along,” said Bassett.

His early interest in in performing was piqued by Popeye cartoons and a third-grade teacher who had the students write skits in class. When his family moved to Columbus, Ohio, Bassett performed in school plays at Upper Arlington High School.

After getting his bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University, he entered the U.S. Army during the Korean War and was deployed to Okinawa, where he worked at the U.S. Armed Forces radio station and landed the lead role in the play “Teahouse of the August Moon.”

After the war, he got his master’s degree and doctorate in theatre history from The Ohio State University. He later taught at Pacific Lutheran in Tacoma, Washington, and then Dickinson State University in Dickinson, North Dakota.

In 1970, he was hired by Wright State to start the theatre program.

“I thought the potential was incredible, and it turned out to be that,” Bassett said.

Currently, students must audition as prospective incoming freshmen to get into the theatre program. Of the 450 aspiring students from around the nation who auditioned this year, only 8 percent were accepted.

“We are a pretty damn good program, and Abe is the one who started the whole thing and built this beautiful theatre space,” said W. Stuart McDowell, current chair and artistic director for Wright State’s Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures.

Bassett left Wright State in 1988 to become dean of fine and performing arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. He retired in 1994.

“Producer’s Notes” is available at Amazon for $7.95.