Office: Creative Arts Center T148, Main Campus
Phone: 937/775-3072
Email: stuart.mcdowell@wright.edu
McDowell came to educational theatre after two decades working as playwright, translator, composer, director, artistic director, and producer. He has lectured on subjects ranging from Bertolt Brecht to William Shakespeare, from Columbia University and New York University to the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. His articles have been published in Performing Arts Journal, The Drama Review, The Brecht Sourcebook(Routledge, 2000), and the Los Angeles Times. His plays have been produced professionally, including The Brothers BOOTH! He holds a B.A. with Honors from Macalester College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley. Recipient of a two-year Fulbright Scholarship at the Berliner Ensemble in Germany, he has translated and directed numerous dramas by Goethe, Wedekind, Weiss, and Brecht, including New York and American premieres of the works of Bertolt Brecht, including The Life of Edward II, produced by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival.
McDowell was the founding Artistic Director of the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City, where he staged over fifty productions, radio broadcasts, and benefits with Tom Hanks, Jeremy Irons, Nicol Williamson, Roger Rees, Daniel O. Smith, Eric Hoffmann, and Anna Deavere Smith. In 1985, McDowell directed A Christmas Carol at the Symphony Space in New York with Len Cariou, Carole Shelley, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Rex Smith and the late Helen Hayes and Raul Julia. The following year he remounted the production on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre with F. Murray Abraham, June Havoc, Ossie Davis, and Helen Hayes. He subsequently served as Artistic Director for Grove Shakespeare in southern California, when the company received its first Los Angeles theatre Critics Circle Award, and, in 1993, he received the Los Angeles Drama-Logue Award for Stage Directing for Noël Coward's Private Lives.
Since coming to Wright State University in 1994, McDowell directed the regional premiere of The Secret Garden, as well as Cyrano de Bergerac, Show Boat, The Crucible, Romeo & Juliet: America 2000, Lost In Yonkers, Cabaret, As You Like It, and The Threepenny Opera and produced Love Letters, with Martin Sheen and Samantha Langevin. In 1996 McDowell co-authored (with Timothy J. Nevits) and directed WSU's 1913: The Great Dayton Flood, with narration by Martin Sheen, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, which opened the American College Theatre Festival at the Kennedy Center in 1997, winning for McDowell and Nevits the Meritorious Award for Playwriting from the Kennedy Center ACTF. In 2000, he conceived, composed the music for, and directed WSU Theatre's production of 1903: The Wings of Dreams, about the Wright brothers and leading Dayton poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, which was broadcast on Think TV, Greater Dayton Public Television in 2001. McDowell is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Entertainment, and Who's Who in American Education.
But McDowell's proudest achievement since coming to Wright State University has been the fostering of new programs and scholarships for students. Since becoming chair, scholarship funding has increased tenfold for students, and the department now offers a wide range of support to qualified students to enable them to study and to thrive in the exceptional programs of theatre, dance and motion pictures.
For additional information about scholarships within the department, see here
