Colton Rice

Treasurer, House Manager, Production Manager

Colton Rice has been part of the OCTA family since 2021, where he first fell in love with the space while working on the lighting design for RENT. Since then, he’s hardly left the building—having been involved in nine mainstage productions, including RENT, A Man of No Importance, Daddy Long Legs, Pippin, Assassins, Dogfight, Bus Stop, Musical of Musicals: The Musical, and now The Wild Party. Many of these productions saw Colton designing up to three elements at once.

Colton wears many hats here at OCTA!  He is our Treasurer, House Manager, a Production Manager, and he chairs both the Finance and Development Committees—helping not only expand OCTA’s community outreach through our Second-Stage and Educational Series, but also planning and supporting the long-term financial health and sustainability of the theatre.

In addition to serving on the Board of Directors since February 2024, Colton works with area high schools as a Lighting Design Mentor, fostering the next generation of theatre artists. He was a theatre scholarship recipient at Kansas State University, portrayed Peter Van Daan in a 2006 national tour of The Diary of Anne Frank, and has earned numerous nominations and awards for his design work throughout the Kansas City theatre community.

If Colton isn’t in the theatre, you can find him working to convert his turf lawn into a biodiverse paradise of native plants, woodland critters, and endangered pollinators.  His next project is a rain garden with a natural pond and trickling waterfall.  Unless he’s in his bed, in which case he’s practicing the fine art of staying perfectly, gloriously still.