EXIT WITHOUT FANFARE: SOUTHEAST DIRECTOR REFLECTS ON YEARS IN THE BACK ROW

For the past 33 years, Dr. Donald Schulte has been the imperturbable pilot behind the scenes of some of Southeast Missouri State University's most adventurous and yet assured and classical stage productions.

Schulte's retirement Dec. 31 was as under the radar as his directing style. He is teaching two theater courses this semester and will teach two basic speech courses in the fall but does not plan to direct any more plays at Southeast. Last spring's "As You Like It" and a pinch hit last fall as director of Neil Simon's "The Good Doctor" were his last works as a Southeast director.

Schulte grew up in the unlikeliest of theatrical spawning grounds, a farm outside of Yankton, S.D. In high school, he accompanied a friend who was auditioning for a part in a play at the local girls school. Short on boys, they talked Schulte into auditioning, too.

"I just got bit by the bug," he says. "I found out this was something I could do."

Yet as an undergraduate at Yankton College, he was an English major. He had a graduate assistantship lined up in the English department at the University of Florida when his advisor questioned whether he would be happier in the theater.

Though he has the sonorous voice of a Shakespearean actor, at the University of South Dakota Schulte took a directing course that changed his life. "It was one of those epiphanies," he recalled. "Yeah, I'm a director."

Money and audiences

He arrived at Southeast in the 1960s, a time when educational theater was in its heyday. "The '60s were tailor-made for theater," he says. "There was money and there were audiences. It was prior to cable TV and cinema 82-plexes."

The University Theatre produced six shows a year, two or three of them experimental productions. "We were one of the core elements of the arts in this community," Schulte said. "It was pretty exciting stuff."

"Becket" was the first show he directed at Southeast. He cast Roger Hudson, "a scared freshman," in one of the leads. Schulte later learned that Hudson was the first black student ever to appear on stage at Southeast.

Hudson now is a professional actor in Syracuse, N.Y.

Twenty-five years ago, Schulte founded the Lab Theatre for experimental productions. His only orders were not to let Dr. Mark Scully, then the university's authoritarian president, know about it.

Not all the experiments in theater were successful. Two one-act plays titled "Death of Dr. Faust" and "Christopher Columbus" bombed. "Nobody knew what the hell it was," Schulte says. "People kind of avoided me for awhile."

"Indians," an anti-Vietnam War play, was staged with the foul language intact. The two witches in "Dark of the Moon" wore mostly body paint. "They were nearly nude," Schulte said. "You could do that back then."

Nobody objected to the partial nudity though someone did complain about a Bible appearing on the same stage with witches.

Specialized in the Bard

But classical works, particularly Shakespeare's plays, have been Schulte's forte. Shakespeare was the subject of his master's thesis and doctoral dissertation. "I've hogged all the Shakespeare," he said.

Even these have had Schulte's personal twist. Last year's "As You Like It" was a hippified version set in the 1960s.

Directing while a talent like Rachel Roberts shapes a character has given Schulte the greatest pleasure through the years. "To watch her take that role of Rosalind and work it, you can't take any credit for that kind of thing," he says. "There are times when the best directing is just step back and let them act."

In 33 years and more than 40 productions, only one performance he directed was ever canceled. That was when the lead in "The Taming of the Shrew" got laryngitis.

Few of Southeast's theater majors have gone on to work professionally. But being involved in theater still has been important in their lives, he says. "It helps them as people or as communicators. A theater background is useful for so many things."

He hopes the plans for the new School of Visual and Performing Arts include those students.

sblackwell@semissourian.com.335-6611, extension 182