PLAYS SET FOR SEMINARY GROUNDS

In Shakespeare's day, plays were presented during daylight hours in the town square or the yard of an inn. Patrons rented a stool or stood, and paid a penny to attend.

This summer's first Old Seminary Shakespeare Festival will be very Elizabethan in those ways, although the price of admission will be cheaper.

The festival, the first of its kind in Cape Girardeau, will provide free entertainment on the grounds of Old St. Vincent's College June 29-30 and July 5-6.

The 1 1/2-hour production will be a sampler of Shakespearean comedies in this inaugural season. It will be presented at 6 each evening.

The players will include festival founder and artistic director Robert W. Dillon Jr.; his wife, Ellen Dillon; and Kara Cracraft, Allen Naslund and Jeff South. The Dillons teach at Southeast Missouri State University, Cracraft and South are University Theatre alumni and Naslund is a writer and English professor who recently appeared in the River City Players' "Greater Tuna."

The festival won't have opulent costumes or even a stage at first. Those who attend will be invited to bring lawn chairs, blankets, picnics and whatever else might add to their comfort. The entry court of Old St. Vincent's College will serve as the stage.

The audience will be given an opportunity to make a donation to the festival. "You can drop a couple of dollars in the bucket at the end of the show if you want, but you don't have to. We want this to be available to everybody," Dillon says.

He says ticket prices have made theater elitist in the '90s and insists on the festival being an event for the community.

"This is my gift to the community if it fleshes out the way I want it to be," he said.

The initial donations will be used to begin a fund-raising drive. By next year, Dillon hopes to establish a professional company capable of performing a full play, perhaps "The Taming of the Shrew."

Dillon, an associate professor of theater, wants to model the festival after successful events in Utah and Nebraska. Those festivals draw thousands of people each summer to Cedar City, Utah, and to Omaha, Neb. A Renaissance Faire is held on the grounds prior to each show.

"Within five years we could have a real viable attraction for the Cape area," he said.

The venture is a cooperative effort between the festival and the Colonial Cape Foundation, said Dillon, who lauded the cooperation of foundation board member Joann Ruess.

The festival will be the first public event held at the seminary since its purchase by the foundation in April 1995. The foundation has been struggling to pay off its $600,000 note to the Provincial Administration of Vincentian Fathers.

The festival's initial shoestring budget of $3,000 is leftover money from the university's old touring theater. Eventually, Dillon hopes the university will offer students course credit to work for the theater.

"My real goal is to have a professional company each summer with two or three Equity actors," he said.

Dillon thinks there is a burgeoning market for Shakespeare. "Cape will see what this can do. The most important thing is to get people to come and see it," he said.