A big night for the River Campus

An hour before opening night for "Big River," the seats in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall are empty. Downstage right, dressed in their mid-19th-century costumes, Bruce Zimmerman tunes his guitar and Steve Schaffner plays licks from a tune he will perform later on his fiddle. Harmonica player Les Lindy Jr. walks around nervously like a sprinter preparing for the 100-yard dash.

In the center of the stage, stage hands dressed all in black run through some last-minute instructions.

Music director Dr. Christopher Goeke and the sound techs test a balky monitor in the orchestra pit.

Bob Cerchio, assistant director of the School of Visual and Performing Arts, stalks the hall looking for problems and finds few. "Fifteen minutes to house open," stage manager Sara Eaton eventually announces over a microphone. The doors are about to open on opening night.

Wednesday night, 808 of the more than 900 seats have been sold for the first full-scale production at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus. Two of the first patrons to walk in when the doors open at 7:01 p.m. are Emily Coy and Joshua Sailer. "It's so pretty in here," Emily says.

Usher Karine Evans examined a ticket to help an audience member find their seat during opening night of the musical "Big River" at Bedell Performance Hall on the River Campus. (Aaron Eisenhauer)

Both are in their early 20s and work at McAlister's Deli. Neither has ever been to a university theatrical performance before, but Sailer bought season tickets for the productions at the River Campus. "I'm not sure about the symphony part," he says, "but it gets you away from going out to bars and bowling."

Susan and Ron Estes are sitting closer to the stage than almost anyone else in the hall. He called earlier in the day asking for front-row seats and landed the first row of seats in the first mezzanine box. They are glad because Susan doesn't climb stairs.

The Marble Hill, Mo., couple have never attended a university production before either. They know Mike Dumey and Dolly Dambach, two community members in the cast. But, says Ron, "We mostly just wanted to see the new facility."

As the house fills, many people wave to each other. Jerry Ford, who sits on the River Campus board, says that kind of intimacy was the goal of the hall's design. "We wanted it to feel like there are just a few hundred people here."

Longtime Cape Girardeau entrepreneurs Judy and Rock Wilferth couldn't be happier with the new addition to the city's cultural venues. "It's cozy yet awesome," she says. "It's better than we could have dreamed."

Rock agrees with those who predict that people from St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn., eventually will come to shows here. This kind of intimacy is rare at the Fox Theatre.

Southeast freshmen DeRon Wilson and Camille Carroll are among the many patrons who dressed up for the event. Their first reaction to seeing the hall is favorable. "It's like a big concert hall, but it's not too big where you can't see or hear," says Wilson, a music major who plays violin.

Carroll, a journalism major, pronounced the hall "pretty good. It's really modern."

The wood-lined balcony boxes on the side of the hall are staggered like tectonic plates. Dennis Seyer, a longtime theater professor who recently retired, likes the choice of wood because it aids the acoustics. "We talked about this 20-plus years ago," he says of the performance hall. "It takes time and money."

The lack of parking adequate to serve a big house is the only hiccup as the curtain rises on opening night. "We had some very angry people, and they have a right to be," says Cerchio, now in the lobby.

Thirty more spaces will be created on land across the street from the River Campus, but for the near future some patrons of events at the Bedell Performance Hall will be forced to catch the university shuttle bus at the Hutson's Fine Furniture lot three blocks away. "Come early and get on the bus," Cerchio advises.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137