By DON FOWLER

Our love affair with Trinity Rep goes back to the late sixties when I was running Camp Yawgoog.

Reservation Director was a 24/7 job, leaving little time for my  family. The camp nurse asked Joyce to join her for a play by a new Providence theatre company at URI, starring Richard Kneeland and William Cain. Joyce was hooked.

The following fall we started attending plays at their location in a church in Providence’s Trinity Square, later moving to their present location in a former downtown movie palace.

I started reviewing Trinity plays in 1978, when cast members included Cain, Kneeland, Amy Van Nostrand, Melanie Jones, Cynthia Strickland, and a wonderfully talented troupe of resident actors.

Adrian Hall was a pure genius and innovator, staging plays inside and outside the building and even doing one in the old train station, where Track 15 is today.

Richard Cumming added beautiful music, including tunes for “A Christmas Carol,” which can still be heard today.

Set designer Eugene Lee’s talents became known around the theatre world, especially at Saturday Night Live, where he designed weekly sets for their crazy skits.

With the exception of one year when an unpopular director concentrated on avant garde productions, the theatre flourished, winning a Tony Award and attracting well-known actors and featuring actors who went on to fame and fortune.

Oskar Eustis was my favorite artistic director. He had the vision for great theatre. Of course, we lost him to New York, where he has continued to set the theatre world on fire.

Today Curt Columbus continues the Trinity tradition, while introducing new, diverse plays and actors to Rhode Island.

Some of my favorites include Cranston’s Peter Gerety and Warwick’s Janice Duclos, and the always-entertaining Fred Sullivan, Jr.

Warwick’s Gamm Theatre has grown from a tiny Olneyville Alias Theatre, led by a young Edgewood resident, Tony Estrella and containing a number of Trinity students, to a critically acclaimed peer, attracting Boston and New York actors, in addition to former Trinity Repertory favorites like Phyllis Kay, Richard Donnelly, Brian McEleney, Jeff Church and others.

But that’s a story for another day.