This story was first published as “Faces of Southeast Missouri: Rhonda Weller-Stilson, MFA” in the September 2025 issue of The Best Years.
Rhonda Weller-Stilson, MFA, first took the stage in the second grade when she played a fairy in a play at her public school in Cincinnati. She continued theater throughout high school and into college at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO), where she discovered she had more fun being involved backstage than on the stage itself.
It was as a freshman while helping paint the set of “Death of a Salesman,” her first show at SEMO, that she decided she would major in theater in college. It’s also where she met her husband, Kenneth Stilson, PhD, who is now the chair of the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre and Dance at SEMO. The two got married as undergraduates.
Weller-Stilson enjoys the physical tasks of painting and sewing, as well as getting to teach and spend time with students while doing these things together on set. When designing a costume or set, Weller-Stilson spends time reading and re-reading the play, as well as researching the time period it’s set in, such as how people lived and how they dyed the types of fabrics they used then.
“I like to just make other people look good and to create an environment for actors to thrive when they’re onstage,” Weller-Stilson says.
Throughout her career, Weller-Stilson has created costumes and scenery with Fort Worth Shakespeare in the Park, Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Hip Pocket Theatre, Missouri Summer Repertory Theatre and New Orleans’ Le Petit Vieux Carre. She has taught at The Alabama School of Mathematics and Science, University of South Alabama, and Texas Woman’s University.
Weller-Stilson and Stilson came back to SEMO in 2001 to be a part of helping to build the River Campus. Weller-Stilson says although they never planned it, it felt like coming home. Throughout the years, she’s worked at SEMO as a professor of costume and scenery design, department chair, and director of the Holland School of Visual and Performing Arts.
In 2018, Weller-Stilson became the dean of the Holland College of Arts and Media. In this role, she has worked to strengthen collaborations between departments in the college, especially through the Big Band Holiday Jukebox and Celebrate the Arts events.
“I still get to use my creativity, just in a different way,” Weller-Stilson says of being a dean. “Being an advocate is really what I try to do.”
Her favorite productions she has been a part of throughout her career include “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Carousel” and “Big River.” Her favorite shows she has seen include “The Grapes of Wrath” on Broadway, as well as “Les Miserables” and “The Lion King” at The Fabulous Fox Theatre.
Weller-Stilson says many of the opportunities she’s had are because of the encouragement of mentors.
“I’m here because of so many other people. Theater is a community, and the Holland College, it’s a community. And so I’m successful here because of the fantastic faculty and chairs [of the departments],” Weller-Stilson says. “This place is special because of all of the people who had the vision — the donors … the presidents … the community members who come and buy tickets.”
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