Dr. David Feldshuh has been the main promoter of a vision for the theater arts at Cornell since the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts was just an idea. He retires in June after nearly 28 years as the center's founding artistic director, but will continue teaching -- and is looking forward to serving as a Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellow next year.

"When I arrived at Cornell, the Schwartz Center was a hope," Feldshuh said. "My first job was to represent the idea that Cornell could and should offer excellence and give students the opportunity to participate and learn the crafts of theater, film and dance in a state-of-the-art facility."

He found the experience of selling that idea energizing. "I would travel and talk with alumni and potential supporters ... about what this meant for our students, because they would have opportunities to learn from artists and teachers of the highest quality. Then my colleague Bruce Leavitt arrived in 1986 and catalyzed the RPTA [Resident Professional Teaching Associate] program, which emphasized learning by doing, side-by-side with professional actors. And that set us apart and gave us an identity."

Each season since the center opened in 1988, Feldshuh's goal has been "to meet the challenge of producing a variety of plays including the great classics, works that question the human condition and demand considerable craft in every area, to do them justice and bring them to life. I was also of the mind to judge our success by our ability to put people in the seats."

The Schwartz Center has usually achieved its targets, attracting 13,000-15,000 people each year, about 40-50 percent of them students, he said.

Feldshuh has directed numerous, often large-scale productions, from Shakespeare plays to the 1930s labor musical "Cradle Will Rock" in 2005 to an ambitious staging (with 130 performers) of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" in 2009.

"We produced 'Antigone' for the freshman Reading Project [in 2003] as a collaboration with the whole campus," Feldshuh said. "We had a new score, and it was videotaped for libraries. That was an exhilarating example of theater as a catalyst for engagement of the campus, community and region."

Feldshuh teaches directing courses and the Student Laboratory Theatre Company, where participants move on to various production roles or enter the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance's honors program. "One thing that I've enjoyed is watching the ladder both of opportunity and of participation," Feldshuh said.

He is creating a new course, Acting in Public, to be the model for his Menschel project with the Center for Teaching Excellence, applying acting, directing and playwriting techniques to public presentation and teaching.

Feldshuh also is a playwright -- his 1992 play "Miss Evers' Boys" was a Pulitzer Prize finalist -- and a board-certified emergency medicine physician at Cayuga Medical Center. He goes to the Dominican Republic each year on a medical mission, helping sugarcane workers.

With some sabbatical time pending after this year, "I have a lot of time to re-create my artistic life," he said -- starting with a desk drawer full of notes for writing projects he is eager to pursue.

"My most fulfilling memory will be the legacy of students, their work and their achievement after leaving Cornell," he said. "I have always felt that from their participation in Theatre, Film and Dance, they have gained so many transferable lessons about the quality of effort that's required to do fine work."

Theater training offers lessons in teamwork, meeting deadlines, and "even the value of a experiencing a bit of humiliation and surviving it," he said. "Perhaps most importantly, working in a process that makes rigorous demands reminds you that you have an imagination, and that you can be creative in the face of challenges."

"It has always been my hope and goal that the students who work with us will graduate Cornell with an increased sense of who they are and what they can achieve," he said. "Those students are our most important legacy."