In Columbia Basin College play, theater mishaps take center stage

Ronn Campbell has been in theater for about two decades, and he’s seen just about everything possible go wrong.

“I’ve seen actors arrested opening night. There was a show where the follow spot operator had to go to the hospital because he ate a cookie with peanuts in it,” said Campbell, who’s worked around the Northwest and now is an associate professor of theater at Columbia Basin College in Pasco.

“The simple ones are the actors forgetting their lines,” he said. “I’ve worked on a show where an actor broke her leg in production.”

In Headsets (A View from the Light Booth), opening May 18 at CBC, theater mishaps take center stage.

Campbell is directing the comedy, with performances at 7:30 p.m. May 18-21.

“It’s going to be a good evening of theater,” he said. “It’s a light-hearted farce of a play.”

Penned by William Missouri Downs, Headsets takes place behind the scenes of a doomed production of Hamlet.

After the matinee, the actors begin to drop from food poisoning. Other theater emergencies soon unfold.

“There’s a lot of running around and trying to solve a pretty unusual situation,” Campbell said.

Daniel Conley takes on the role of Hammet, the stage manager. The rest of the cast includes Chris Garcia as Claude, Hammet’s stepfather and the light board operator; Jill Faulk as Amelia, assistant stage manager; Cooper Wutzke as a Shakespearean actor; McKenzie Kennedy as Officer Shubert; and Ricardo Orta as the sound board operator.

The cast and crew are working hard, and the production is going much more smoothly than the one it depicts, Campbell said.

But, even if a few hiccups arise, well, that’s part of the fun.

The best part of live theater is that the actors, the crew, the director — everyone — are working without a net, Campbell said.

“In movies, they just redo it until it’s perfect. But in live theater, you don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s one thing we can do in the theater far better than a film ever can — that moment of being there. The audience can say, ‘I was there that one night that one thing happened,’ ” Campbell said. “That’s why I love theater so much.”

Tickets to Headsets are $12 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. They’re available at Adventures Underground in Richland, JD’s Time Center in Kennewick and the CBC bookstore.

This story was originally published May 11, 2016 at 5:24 PM with the headline "In Columbia Basin College play, theater mishaps take center stage."