Change and continuity were the themes of a recent event at Washington University.

“We want to celebrate the accomplishments of our friend Henry Schvey,” said Jim McCloud, dean of the Washington University College of Arts and Sciences and vice chancellor for student affairs, at the recent gathering of several hundred students, faculty, family members and friends at the Holmes Lounge on the university’s campus. Schvey has stepped down from his position as chair of the Washington University Performing Arts Department after 19 years in that position. He will be taking a one-year sabbatical before returning to Washington University as a professor. Schvey will be succeeded by Rob Henke, who has served as chair of the university’s Comparative Literature program.

At the time of the announcement, Schvey was quoted in Student Life, the university’s student newspaper, as telling a group of his students, “It’s been a joy,” adding, “And the reason it’s been a joy has been you.” Schvey also said, “my hope and anticipation is not that there will be changes, but that there will be continuity.”

During his long tenure as chair of the Washington University Peforming Arts Department, Schvey became immensely popular among his students, faculty colleagues and the artistic and general communities in St. Louis. A prolific writer, Schvey has written several plays, some of which have strong Jewish content, as well as essays and novels. Schvey was named chair of the department in 1987. Prior to his arrival at Washington University, he taught and directed for l4 years at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he was professor of English and American literature.

Schvey has lectured and published extensively in the areas of modern European, British and American drama. Among his most significant writings are an interdisciplinary study of an Austrian expressionist, Oskar Kokoschka: the Painter as Playwright, and a collection of essays on contemporary American drama. He has also published essays on such American playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard and David Mamet. In addition to his research, he founded the Leiden English Speaking Theatre in the Netherlands and was artistic director of this Dutch touring company from 1975 until coming to St. Louis.

It was at the Leiden English Speaking Theatre that Schvey met the award-winning British actress Jane Lapotaire, who later became a visiting scholar for the Washington University Performing Arts Department at Schvey’s invitation. Lapotaire was the main guest speaker at the tribute gathering in the Holmes Lounge, saying that she put aside her dread of flying to come to St. Louis to pay tribute to Schvey and his wife Patty, who had played such important roles in her life, including a stay in the Schvey home when she was recovering from a brain injury. “It has been an utter delight to have been a part of Henry Schvey’s career. Henry, to me you are the ultimate, “Quiet American”. You are a deep, deeply human, human being, who has a remarkable ability to gather people around you. As a great poet once said, ‘What will survive of us is love,’ and we give you our love as we send you on your way.”

Schvey was also praised for his directing accomplishments. He has directed numerous plays in both Europe and the United States, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night by Shakespeare. In 1992, he started Shakespeare’s Globe, an intensive four-week summer acting program operated in conjunction with The Globe Theatre in London.

In addition to directing Shakespeare, Schvey has directed numerous modern plays, including Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, Peter Shaffer’s Equus, Sophie Treadwill’s Machinal and S. Anski’s The Dybbuk. Among the world premieres he has directed are Richard Selzer’s The Black Swan and Jim Leonard Jr.’s Gray’s Anatomy. He also directed the Midwest premiere of Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol’s Shooting Magda.

More recently, Schvey turned his attention to writing. His first play, Hannah’s Shawl, first commissioned by the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center in 1999, was peformed on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day before more than 1,000 people.

Schvey also completed a novel, The Poison Tree, and an original stage adaptation of Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening, which was performed at Edison Theatre in October 2004. In the summer of 2003, he participated in the inaugural Playwriting Workshop sponsored by the American College Theatre Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. This past semester, he completed his play, Kokoschka: A Love Story, a study of the relationship between Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler; it was performed in February in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre, under the direction of William Whitaker.

Schvey has been married to his wife Patty for 36 years, and has two daughters, Jerusha and Natasha, a son, Aram and “too many dogs and cats to mention by name.” Schvey, a native of New York “has been a rabid Cardinals fan since the 1968 World Series.”