It was a humble place as theaters go, better suited for a maintenance building than a great stage.

But over 43 years, California Lutheran University's Little Theatre was the place where thousands of students acted, directed and produced plays. So with only a few weeks left before demolition, alumni and faculty gathered Sunday to mourn its passing.

"It taught us to do a lot with a little," said Patricia Marsac, a 1996 graduate and co-organizer of what was billed as a wake for the Little Theatre.

Drama graduate Haley White, who helped Marsac put on the event, said the theater was a haven for drama students at the Thousand Oaks campus.

"Security wouldn't bother you," she said. "You could come here whenever you wanted."

Professor Michael Arndt said the theater was so intimate that it made for magical productions.

"It never sat more than 100 people at any time," he said. "We did a production of Cabaret' in which the entire theater was turned into a nightclub."

Dozens showed up to toast the end, hugging classmates and eating appetizers on tables set with theater masks.

They filed inside the theater where someone had written in chalk on the black wall: "Goodbye, little theatre."

They leafed through scrapbooks filled with photos and playbills.

Inside these walls, students put on plays from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" to "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" to weekly improvs. Professional and community theater groups used it as well.

Buddy Ebsen acted there, and playwright Edward Albee put on a workshop. It served as the Western White House when President George H.W. Bush took up quarters there while attending a political rally for former California Gov. Pete Wilson in 1990.

Marsac had removed part of a plywood wall from the sound and lighting booth upstairs in preparation for the event.

Over the years, students had written their names and send-offs on the wall. "If you're going to regret something in the morning, sleep late," read one.

The mementos were to be auctioned off to raise money for the theater's new quarters inside a gymnasium that's been replaced by a new sports center.

Workers are converting the gym into a stage, classroom, dressing and rehearsal rooms, and costume and shop space, more than tripling the space. It's scheduled to be ready next month, Arndt said.

The guests who came to the wake planned to tour the new theater in the gym.

But it was their old quarters that they remembered Sunday as they saw old friends and shared memories in an open mike show.

"I wanted to come over and see it and feel the memories before it's gone," said Barbara Hudson Powers, a founding faculty member who started teaching drama classes in a chicken coop at CLU in the 1960s.

"It's going to be better in the old gym. The spirit of true drama will exist no matter where it is."