Campbell Finds Forum

An old man tormented by a voice, a guy bugged by crabs and a schoolgirl with a toothache. What do the three have in common?

Actor Ron Campbell.

In “50/60 Vision,” a program of 13 plays in repertory at the Mark Taper Forum, Campbell plays each of the three characters in separate pieces.

“It’s a ball,” Campbell says. “Some people would say these plays are museum pieces. I think the challenge was to take them out of the museum and splash ‘em up!”

In “Eh Joe” by Samuel Beckett, Campbell is the only actor on stage--and he doesn’t have a line. He simply listens to “a voice inside his head” says Campbell, a taped vocal performance by Angela Paton. Through the use of mirrors and a camera, Campbell’s face is projected onto three 10x10-foot screens.

In Eugene Ionesco’s “The Lesson,” Campbell, wearing girls’ school pleats and a bra stuffed with birdseed, arrives at the home of her tutor, eager to “arithmatize.”

“She wants so much to please her professor,” Campbell says of his character. “But as his agenda becomes more threatening, she becomes more and more broken. It’s very painful.”

Campbell’s character in “Red Cross,” by Sam Shepard is afflicted by lice but won’t admit it.

“The play says something about today,” Campbell says. “People don’t deal with their own personal problems. The Pampers! The Huggies! People are not willing to change diapers; they’d rather make landfills.”

Other than a twin passion for basketball, Campbell says, “all I’ve ever wanted to do was theater work.” He’s a founder of the theater company, the Actor’s Gang, and an artistic associate at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

“My high school took a field trip to the Taper,” Campbell remembers, “and I said, “god darn it, if I’m not at the Forum playing for the Lakers, I want to be doing theater here.”