The Loft Theatre at Dowling College is actually older than Dowling College.  Founded as "The Thespians" in 1960 by the renowned critic and director, Arnold Rood, then on the faculty of Adelphi/Suffolk College, the Loft Theatre was from its very beginning devoted to academic literary theater and to the development of the actor.  One of Rood's first productions here was Jean Anouilh's Antigone.  After Dowling became an independent college in 1968, Rood continued on the faculty as Professor of Dramatic Art, and the Loft Theatre occupied the home from which it took its new name: the hay loft of the William K. Vanderbilt carriage house, converted recently into the Gerald and Rosemary Curtin Student Center.  With the addition of Ned Bobkoff to the drama faculty and with speech and dramatic arts offered as an academic major (1974), the Loft Theatre persisted in its commitment to the production of serious plays.   Among these early plays were Tennessee Williams' Camino Real, Sartre's No Exit, Webster's Duchess of Malfi, and Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape.  Then as now, the Loft Theatre was made up of students, alumni, professionals, and actors from the local community theaters.  Directing chores were shared among Bobkoff and members of the Art and English departments. Under Bobkoff's direction, the Loft expanded the range of its work to include more experimental plays.

When in 1976, the Loft's home in the carriage house proved inadequate, it moved to its present location in Dowling's Performing Arts' Center, a facility it still shares with the Music and Dance departments.  There it occupies a flexible black-box theater, holding approximately 75 audience members, in which it is able to mount productions in a variety of styles.  Among its most recent productions, under the Artistic Direction of Benilde Montgomery, have been evenings of Shakespeare, including an original dramatization of the Sonnets; Bert Brecht's Fear and Misery in the Third Reich, as well as his adaptation of Antigone; and Two Short Plays of Luigi Pirandello: "Sicilian Limes" and "The Man with a Flower in his Mouth."; Sam Shepard's Buried Child; Carl Sternheim's The Underpantsand Moliere's The Misanthrope.

In spring 2004, Andrew Karp, Prof. of English at Dowling, took over as Artistic Director and oversaw the production of Sam Shepard's True West, the fall 2004 production of Euripides' Bacchae: The Disarmers, directed by Tracy Bersley, Dario's Fo's Can't Pay! Won't Pay and Shakespeare's 12th Night, both directed by Stephen Wisker, and the ambitious Spring 2006 production of Mary Zimmerman's Adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, directed by Bridgette Dunlap. Since then, the Loft has mounted productions of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Much Ado About Nothing, Joe Orton’s incredible farce What the Butler Saw, and the spring 2008 original production of The Epic of Sunjata, directed by Tracy Bersley and written & adapted by Andrew Karp and Ms. Bersley which the Loft has plans to remount as an Equity Showcase in Manhattan in Spring 2009. Under his leadership, the Loft has dedicated itself to presenting classic, thought-provoking, ensemble-based works that both entertain and educate, utilizing the intimacy of the Loft space to expand the relationship between audience, actors, and material. In every instance, the Loft has tried to remain faithful to Rood and Bobkoff's visions and produce entertaining plays of both academic and literary excellence.