FORMER ND ACTOR NOW ON BROADWAY

NEW YORK CITY -- It's a long way from Notre Dame High School's stage to Broadway, but Roger Seyer has made it.

Two weeks ago, the 1985 Notre Dame graduate became a member of the ensemble of the long-running musical "Miss Saigon."

He describes being notified a short time after auditioning: "My mouth kind of dropped and I kind of was shaking," he said. "You set goals for yourself and when you achieve the goal it's very exciting and hard to express."

Seyer had planned to spend the summer in Kansas City, where he'd landed a job as one of the wranglers in "The Will Rogers Follies" at the Starlight Theatre. Now the son of Joe and Frieda Seyer of Cape Girardeau is performing eight shows a week at the Broadway Theatre in New York City.

The musical is set in Saigon in 1975 and loosely based on "Madame Butterfly."

Since graduating from college in 1989, Seyer has been pursuing a career on the stage with some success at regional theaters in Chicago, Louisville and in Florida.

A dancer as well as a singer, his credits include appearances with the American Ballet Theater in "Swan Lake" and "Giselle."

"From a very young age I knew I wanted to do it (pursue a theatrical career)," Seyer said. "But how to get there was always the big challenge. You kind of second-guess yourself."

New York City finally beckoned. He and his wife, Kari, moved to New York a year and a half ago. "When we moved to New York it was a totally different market," Seyer said. "It's been tough at times to meet people and I have done some waiting of tables."

His wife works for a New York City legal publisher, and they live in Weehawken, N.J.

Though his part in "Miss Saigon" is relatively small, it's still Broadway. "It will mean a lot on my resume," Seyer said. "Hopefully it will open up some more doors."

Eventually he hopes to focus his career on film and TV.

At Notre Dame, Seyer played Tony in "West Side Story," Barnum in "Barnum," Nicely Nicely in "Guys and Dolls" and the Jester in "Once Upon a Mattress."

After graduating from Notre Dame, Seyer attended Southeast for a year before transferring to Millikin University, a small liberal arts college in Decatur, Ill.

"It was one of the few (colleges) that offered a degree in musical theater," he said.

His drama teacher at Notre Dame, Cynthia King, said she has been "floating on air" since Seyer called to tell her about his success.

He is unique among the students she has taught, she says. "Roger is the first person who really set his goals on the theater. He said, 'I am a theater major.'"

Seyer said his parents are "very, very happy and I think relieved to know that I was going to be able to be here in New York and have a full-time job."

The annual musicals at Notre Dame, which under King have become an institution in which roles are highly sought-after, were crucial first steps on the road to Broadway, Seyer said.

"It was great for me to have that venue early on to kind of nurture that desire in myself," Seyer said. "

"For there to be an outlet for it to be OK, for the community to say, This is a good thing."