When Harvey Melvin Doster welcomed new students to his theater class at Towson University, he’d burn a candle and turn off the lights. In the safety of darkness, he asked his acting pupils to talk about what mattered most to them.

In minutes, “he was able to get people to be open and emotionally vulnerable, the kind of stuff you want from actors, immediately,” said Paul Diem, a former student.

He’d later have them take on roles from some of his favorite, most complicated works — ones that dealt with child abuse and alcoholism and gun violence. He’d ask the students to stand on stage and justify their character’s actions to the audience. The sessions were sometimes loud, messy and passionate, former students said, but that’s exactly how Doster liked it.

There were few things Doster enjoyed more than seeing an actor in their element — so his mentees decided to host a celebration of his life before a Towson University theater production on May 2.

“There’s no way we’re going to be able to do this memorial service in a timely fashion,” said Diem, now the head of the theatre department at the George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology. “Too many people are going to want to say things.”

Doster, known for his panache and commitment to students at Towson and Saint Timothy’s School, a private all-girls high school in Stevenson, died in his sleep Feb. 19 after a fall at home. He was 73.

He was born Sept. 23, 1952, to Russell and Vera Doster, and raised in Sparks. Growing up surrounded by the fields of northern Baltimore County, Doster was an award-winning gardener and active in 4-H. He snagged hundreds of ribbons for the myriad potted plants and flowers he entered at local and state fairs, newspaper archives show.

Doster always had an affinity for theater, those who knew him said, and was a Peabody Preparatory-trained pianist.

He majored in piano and drama at Western Maryland College, now named McDaniel College, in Westminster. After graduation, he taught private piano lessons and studied theater briefly at Towson before enrolling in a master’s program in directing at George Washington University. He graduated in 1982 and returned to the Baltimore area.

While in graduate school, Doster stopped competing in the Maryland State Fair, but he picked up the hobby again 12 years later after his mother died. He built two massive gardens in the backyard of his Parkville townhouse and eventually succeeded one of his competitors as head of the fair’s flowers and plants division, The Baltimore Sun reported at the time.

In the early 1980s, Doster started teaching acting classes at Towson, then briefly at his undergraduate alma mater. He joined the staff at St. Timothy’s in 1984.

“He just cared deeply about each student as an individual, and he really worked to uplift and inspire students to our full potential as artists and as citizens,” said Robyn Quick, a former student-turned-Towson colleague. “He had this wonderful ability to challenge and encourage in the same breath.”

Corinne Winters, a former pupil and international opera singer, credits Doster with fostering her love of theater and encouraging her to find inspiration in her surroundings.

“When I started with him, I was a very stiff, very inhibited young singer, and through his guidance and friendship as well, I became a better actress,” she said. “He helped me tap into my natural storytelling ability and what I had within me that was authentic and not formulaic.”

Doster was active in local theater, serving as artistic director of the Splitting Image Theatre Company in Baltimore from 1986 to 1993. There, he directed productions such as “Family Masks,” about the husband and children of a woman struggling with alcoholism, and “Closets,” about four adults coping with childhood trauma.

Later, after the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School, Doster and his students produced a show to raise awareness about gun violence. They performed at other colleges and high schools in the Baltimore-D.C. region.

Doster also co-founded the Catalyst Theater Company at Towson and directed shows at the Maryland Arts Festival. He led productions of “Oliver” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” at Theatre on the Hill at Western Maryland College. He had “broad and eclectic tastes,” said former student Ian Belknap, now the artistic director of New York Stage and Film.

“He really was the precursor to what happened later in Baltimore, with all the storefront theater movement,” Belknap said. “Avant-garde is a big phrase, but I think he did change the landscape, because he was doing things that weren’t going to appeal to the masses. They weren’t just going to be standard-fair musicals or plays direct from Broadway.”

Beyond his acting and teaching prowess, Doster’s students remember him most for his rambunctious personality and conspicuous — but consistent — fashion choices. He drove a mustard-yellow Mustang convertible and sometimes wore a matching velour jumpsuit. He painted his nails and dyed his hair vibrant colors. He wore Birkenstocks, sockless, no matter the weather.

“He never did anything in a small way,” Quick said.

Doster always greeted friends and students with a bear hug. He had a “wild, big Joker smile,” Winter said.

“We’ve all seen the kind of artsy people who have a lot of wit, but they avoid the deeper truths of life, and then we’ve seen also these brooding, dark souls that can’t laugh or can’t make a joke,” the opera singer said. “Harvey really had it all.”

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