Southeast scrambles to fill theater vacancies

It was just 2 1/2 months ago that the Department of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University announced the 2003-2004 season of plays to be presented at the Rose Theatre. One is Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," an artfully chaotic romantic comedy.

The subsequent summer has been a bit like an odd dream for the theater department as well.

In late June, lighting director Ken Cole announced he was taking a similar position at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Two weeks later, Sharon Bebout-Carr, a tenured professor in the department, resigned.

Bebout-Carr was scheduled to direct the university's first play of the fall semester, "Two Rooms," at the end of September.

Kenn Stilson, chairman of the department, had to do a fast soft shoe.

Phil Nacy, an old friend of Stilson's, came from Baltimore to replace Cole. Ellen Dillon, wife of associate professor Robert Dillon Jr., was hired to assume Bebout-Carr's teaching duties.

Stilson welcomed the offer of Roseanna Whitlow, who teaches in the Department of Mass Communication, to direct "Two Rooms." She has directed productions both at the university and for the River City Players and had helped Bebout-Carr cast the play.

"Without knowing I'd be directing it, I had studied the script," she said.

Both Nacy and Dillon were hired as one-year replacements. The university will conduct national searches to fill the positions permanently by next fall.

Stilson said Bebout-Carr's resignation caught him off guard but was not a complete surprise. He said she had told him months earlier that she was considering leaving the university and moving out West. She could not be reached for comment.

Cole, who was hired by the university in 2001, was not job hunting. Notre Dame sought him out. The faculty there knew his work from when he taught at the University of Indiana at South Bend.

Besides being a nationally prominent institution, Notre Dame also is building a $70 million performing arts facility. "All we could say was, 'Good luck to you,'" Stilson said.

Adjusted to Cape's pace

Nacy's family is from Missouri, and he is close to completing his doctorate at the University of Missouri. He was teaching at Morgan State University in Baltimore but was looking for a way to return to the state. He is both a lighting and sound designer as well as technical director.

"We were fortunate to have found somebody this qualified on short notice," Stilson said.

Nacy said he already has adjusted to Cape Girardeau's different pace. "Instead of having an hour-and-10-minute commute, I have a nine-minute commute," he said. "I see people not locking their car doors. People would never do that in Baltimore."

Dillon has a master's degree in theater from the University of Missouri. She has taught courses in the Department of Mass Communication as an adjunct professor but more recently has been working at the Apple Project, a university program that helps elderly people with paperwork.

She also is a clown, accompanying the famed Dr. Patch Adams to perform in Siberian hospitals a few years ago. She will do the same kind of clown work in Jamaica in December and in China next May.

Dillon is a graduate of the highly regarded American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She accepted the one-year position because she wanted to put her education and experience to use again and because the timing was right.

"This is a definite time of change for the entire university campus, particularly with the River Campus coming on," she said. "I'm really glad to be part of this college while it steps into that -- whatever it's going to be like. This is a prime year for me to be here."

New equipment

The River Campus, the university's planned College of Visual and Performing Arts, is expected to be completed by 2006. This year's Southeast freshmen will be able to use it. More immediately they will be able to use more than $350,000 in equipment that has been purchased this year in preparation for the move to the River Campus. That includes new computer labs, video editing and sound systems, and makeup stations.

Stilson said one goal of the River Campus is to make Southeast theater and dance students much more competitive.

Whitlow just finished directing last weekend's River City Players Follies and also is directing "The Mighty Mississippi Melodrama or ... Do I Smell a River Rat?" in a dinner theater production Aug. 28-30 at Port Cape Restaurant.

The speed with which she must ready "Two Rooms" doesn't bother her. "We don't have the usual rehearsal time, but it's such a close, intense drama I think it will work to our benefit," she said.

Student Matt Frey, who will play a hostage in Beirut in "Two Rooms," said all the students in the play received e-mails about the sudden changes in the department. He said he was shocked by Bebout-Carr's departure but added, "We have confidence in Dr. Whitlow and everybody else in the production."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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