THE STAGE BUG BITES AND SEYER REMAINS IN THEATRE WORK

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Dennis Seyer has been around stage and theater most of his life.

As a youngster, he loved to perform in school plays. As a senior at a St. Louis County Catholic high school, Seyer was a member of the school's drama club, and he was cast in every school theater production that year. As a freshman, he landed a role in a Southeast Missouri State University theater production, and, Seyer said, he "really had the bug."

Twenty-five years later Seyer is still in show business. But most of his work now is backstage as director, producer and teacher.

At 41, Chicago-born and St. Louis-raised Seyer is the university's director of theater and its theater business manager. He also teaches stage and theater-related classes and directs productions He's even found time to direct a few musicals, which, he said, he especially enjoys.

Seyer, however, said he derives his greatest pleasure from watching students develop into seasoned performers, stagehands, and lighting and set workers.

After performing in the play his freshman year at Southeast, Seyer did not get a role in either of the next two plays that year. He needed some hours for a theater course he was taking, so during the spring semester Seyer wound up running the theater lighting board. Seyer completed his undergraduate studies at the university as assistant lighting director. He also did some set designing.

After his graduation in 1969 with a bachelor-of-science degree in education, speech and theater, and a minor in English, Seyer returned to St. Louis to teach speech, theater, and English in a Catholic high school for girls.

Finding males for roles in all-girls school plays posed no problems for Seyer; he found them in nearby Catholic boys schools. And when the boys schools needed females for roles in their productions, the girls school provided them.

While teaching at the high school, Seyer became the theater technical director and later its drama director.

After jobs at other parochial schools in the St. Louis area, Seyer retuned to his alma mater in 1977 as scenic-and-lighting and technical director, and as a teacher. Since 1982, he has taken on additional work in costuming, budget, student labor, advertising, public relations and management of theater.

After giving lectures about stage and theater in the classroom, Seyer takes students on stage and shows them how to put what they have learned into practice. It's "teaching by doing," he said.

Seyer is responsible for the educational aspect of the stage and theater and for the many performances that are scheduled throughout the year on and off campus. The most notable are the university theater productions, which this year include stage performances of "The Odd Couple" and "The Fantasticks."

Seyer and his students soon will begin rehearsals for their final production of the year: "Bits of the Bard: Shakespeare's Ladies."

"It will be an evening of dramatic and musical interpretations from the works of Shakespeare," Seyer said. "The play is designed to introduce some of Shakespeare's female characters to the stage and the public."

Besides university theater productions, Seyer also directs a number of annual tour programs, all designed to give students an opportunity to practice what they have learned. "It gives them a chance to see what the real world is all about," Seyer explained.

Being a card-carrying member of the stagehands union has also helped Seyer in his academic and theater activities. When summer arrives, instead of doing laboratory research, Seyer works as a stagehand in professional productions throughout the Midwest.

As a member of the union, Seyer is in contact with professionals. He said the contacts come in handy when he takes his theater students and others on New York theater tours. In New York they attend Broadway shows, then go backstage to talk with cast and technical-staff members.

"Taking the students behind the stage at a Broadway theater to see firsthand what it's all about is just as important as what they learn in the classroom," Seyer explained.

Seyer said the university theater in Cape Girardeau compares favorably with many of the New York theaters he has visited. "We are really blessed with our facility here," he said. "We have an excellent stage, excellent auditorium, excellent dressing rooms and shop area. It's a wonderful plant to learn in."

Seyer said some of his students have gone on to professional stage and theater careers on the East and West coasts while others have become teachers of high-school theater, drama and related courses. Some have gone to work in theater, he said.

Seyer said interest in stage and theater runs in cycles and seems to be on the upswing now. The fine arts, he said, are important to everyone. Theater and stage are an enrichment process for both those who participate and watch. It makes everyday life fuller and more enjoyable, said Seyer.