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Podcast: S8 Ep. 15
Date: June 02, 2025
Title: LU Moment: On stage and off with Porter LaPray | S8 Ep. 15
Host: John Rollins

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JOHN ROLLINS: Welcome to the LU Moment, where we showcase all the great things happening with Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô faculty, staff, students and alumni. I'm John Rollins, Associate Director of Community Relations and Public Affairs here at LU, and I want to welcome you all to this week's show.

Today we're sitting down with a Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô senior whose love for theater brought him here to our university. It's my pleasure to welcome Porter LaPray to the show today. Porter, welcome to the podcast, and thanks for joining me today on the LU Moment.

PORTER LAPRAY: Hey, what's going on? Glad to be here.

JOHN: Always glad to bring our students in and let y'all share your stories. We’ve got some great stories here on campus, and I'm excited to chat with you today. So, we know you love theater, as I just said, so that's why we're here today to talk a little bit more about that. Is there a particular moment in your younger years that you think sparked this love for theater for you?

PORTER: I think it was my first show. I got a little too much freedom, and I kind of thought this wasn't going to be what it was going to be, but one thing that really kept me coming back was my first show I ever did. It was this little spoof of Romeo and Juliet, and we start off with the little game show. They just allowed me to fully go off script and say whatever I wanted to say, to just try and call out the other team for cheating. And I said, “Oh, give me a mic!” Let me go out there and ramble. And so just the idea of getting that freedom, I think, really helped set the tone for my love for it.

JOHN: Well, when was that? What age was that?

PORTER: I was probably, I think it was 11 or 12, so perfect time to hand over the reins, you know, just to get some terrible answers out of someone. But I think, look, it got me here. So, something went right.

JOHN: Yeah, I completely agree. Let's hear a little bit more about your journey that got you here to LU , and a little bit more about your background.

PORTER: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think probably the first thing that really set the tone to me getting here was my sophomore year. I started looking for other programs to pursue theatre a little more seriously, and I wound up at a performing arts high school out in Houston. I did my last two years out there. Really, I think the big life changer, the big pivotal moment that I've gotten to get to. So then after that, I went out to college and just found myself, 19, 20 years old, just struggling to really get your feet planted down anywhere. I wasn't taking life probably seriously enough. So, I get through there. I go through a year in Los Angeles and then I just kind of try to figure out a life where you're like, “Okay, I did all this. Maybe acting is something I can put on the burner. And, you know, get back to trying to be an adult.”

And I never figured out being an adult. So five, six years after all that, I wound up, after doing one little cruise gig, I got to kind of get close to the entertainment vehicle again, and I was like, “No, no, that's what I want to do. I want to do that.” So, I got off the ship and I re-enrolled in classes, and here I am.

JOHN: Okay, so you were on a cruise ship as entertainment, you said?

PORTER: So I hired on as a waiter, and then I moaned and groaned until the waiting tables let me be a part of this. So finally, they let me. They let me do some tech work for a little while. Okay, yeah, and in my last 10 days, I'd finally earned my way up to emcee and then I came home. I got sick and just had to leave the ship. Tough. But you know, you don't catch all your breaks.

JOHN: But I mean, neat experience either way. So cool being around that environment and probably some really good mentors to learn from.

PORTER: So, I got to do three months out in Hawaii. You know, when you ever going to get to do that again? You take the ticket.

JOHN: Take the ticket for sure. And then you said you went your last two years of high school to a performing arts school in Houston, so you took part in plays and productions there, I assume?

PORTER: Oh, absolutely. I got to work a lot with, well, a couple different directors, but one who I'm like, still getting to see their work, and it's just cool to have them still be around, is the person who owns Rec Room now in Houston. If you've ever seen the theater out there, it's a really cool program right next to Daikin Park. But Matt Hune just does incredible work there, and it was really cool to get to study under him at HSPVA, now, the Kinder High School for Performing and Visual Arts, just because they're a real good group who's gotten involved over there, and I don't know, just very glad to have gotten him as a formative teacher and educator. We got to work on a little Chekhov. Then we did Three Sisters. And just being able to put some fire into some work that feels like not letting the date of work set you back, right? It's like late 1800s. It's Russian.

JOHN: This kind of segues me very nicely into another point. I know you were recently in a production of As You Like It, which is a Shakespeare play put on by Alan Brinks here on Lamar’s campus. It was an outdoor production, which you told us earlier you had not done outdoor or Shakespeare before. So, I do want to hear about that specifically, but let me ask you this as well, what are some of the productions you've been a part of here at LU, you know, what roles did you play and how do you think that's going to help you in the future?

PORTER: Yeah, so this this year, I've really gotten to change my typecast a little bit. So, I did musicals for a long time growing up. So I had a nice, big, belty voice. I was always trying to go for that leading man role, and now I just keep getting casted at these as these silly little guys. So Peter Pan, we started off, and I played Smee. You know, I was just the sidekick. I was helping out.

JOHN: Still, what an iconic role, right?

PORTER: I was so happy when I landed it. And we brought a new show to life, The Self-Destruction of Emma James with Kate Brennan. She flew in and directed, and she's the writer. It was such a cool show. I got to play six different goofy little characters, all kind of helping create this world. And then we took on the beast of As You Like It. And Touchstone was such an interesting character for me, because I'm getting closer into doing these comedic roles, and now I'm playing this true jester. And as part of my work throughout the process, I even learned how to juggle for the role, just to kind of get myself into doing little clowny gesture, little tricks, things to pull out here and there, yeah, making bad jokes all the time, which was not a stretch. I will say, I'm pretty used to making bad jokes every now and then. It was really cool to get to actually put on, not the actual jester hat, but to get to assume that role and take on such challenging text. And I think we, just as an ensemble, did a really good job of taking on this new challenge, and a lot of times, especially in some of our rehearsals, really fighting the elements. I remember we'd have 25 mile an hour winds come through, and we're just shouting into it.

JOHN: Well, I mean, you have to project, yeah. That's one of the things, you know. I attended all three of the productions you just named, actually, Peter Pan, Emma James and As You Like It, but that one was outdoors, and you had to project your voice. There were no microphones in Shakespeare's time. So y'all were truly doing that play justice.

PORTER: Thank you. That is all we were striving for, was doing it a little justice. I also think Alan is so incredibly capable of getting people there. He’s just so professional and easy to work with. And I don't know if he's really bragged on you, but he worked for the globe for a little bit.

JOHN: You know, I had him on the podcast, and he won't say all these good things about himself, and I tried to pull some of that out of him. You know, I found online that he's been a part of Clue. He was Colonel Mustard in Clue in the Alley Theatre. He's been in Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet. We didn't talk about any of that on the podcast. So you're learning from some pretty amazing people here at LU.

PORTER: One thing I just did not realize I was getting myself in for with Lamar. You know, I'm from Vidor, so I came over here because, right, this is my local university. If I'm getting back into theater, this is probably the avenue I should go to. But, man, our connections into the Houston theater scene are just, you know, you don't realize, I guess I just slept on what Lamar was going to be. And I feel like an idiot for having done that for as long as I did.

JOHN: I mean, I guess you wouldn't know that automatically until you get here. You know, I just started here about two years ago, a little under two years, but I didn't realize how much of a global employer Lamar is. We've got people from all over with amazing connections to your point. Your faculty in particular, is very well connected in that Houston art scene, theater scene, and I think that means a lot to our students, I assume, because that's what real world experience and mentorship you're getting kind of that avenue to get to where you want to go. The connections are there.

PORTER: I think, specifically within my degree where, like, it just doesn't matter what your resume says. They want to see a little bit about who I've worked with. Can you juggle a certain amount of text or this or that, but at the end of the day, my GPA does not matter. It’s  just about being in the right places and being around people who know other people and can really speak to the fact that you work hard, and just knowing that we're around people who I can see through my work with them, they're going to garner good reputations because they're just so easy to work with, and they're so nice, and we put on great work. What else do you need to make a genuine impression on someone?

JOHN: Yeah, these are fantastic points. But I don't want to downplay the work that you do either. Because, you know, kind of, like you just said, these jester these kind of comedic roles you're used to being, you know, maybe in your younger years you went for the leading role and the louder and the music and all these things, but you're enhancing your skill levels, and you're kind of like adding to your portfolio, I guess, with what you're doing here. So I think that's really neat. I will say, in the Self-Destruction of Emma James, you kind of wore me out, because I feel like you were off stage and on stage and back on stage and back off stage. I mean, that had to have been like was that one of your more strenuous roles?

PORTER: Absolutely. It wore me out too. I have to give a big shout out to, sorry to always keep turning this to other people, but to Bailey Jenkins, because we starting from the beginning of this past year, we'd run a lot together. And I said, “Man, if we had never started doing cardio at the beginning of this year, I couldn't have done Emma James.” It was a full sprint. I'd be sweating from head to toe by the end. Yeah, my costume people had to be just wearing little clothes pins on their nose by the end. I felt so bad for those guys, but we pulled it together, and that was a beast of a show. So much fun. Great experience, too.

JOHN: Yeah, you get into those more strenuous, kind of, more athletic roles. I guess you've definitely got the background now and know how to handle it. You have walked through the fire. You understand.

So, you also told me you work at Walmart. How is that, as a student, you know, on top of being part of the theater productions. You’ve got a job as well. You’rea student taking classes. How do you juggle all that and have a personal life as well?

PORTER: A) It's kind of nice that just a lot of my social life is here. I mean, I'm really close to a lot of the department, so I don't have to think about that like a third thing. It helps. I do it a little with my family life and some of my other friends, but it's probably had to take a backseat in there quite a bit. I invest as much of myself in at school and then at Walmart. I just, I'm a big believer in this idea of inertia, just that an object in motion will stay in motion. And for me, I don't really want the time to sit down whenever I'm at work, I want to be working hard and I think having the job has actually been more of a benefit for me than anything, just because when you have too much free time, I don't think you use it very well

Right now, I have maybe a couple hours of free time a week, and just because I'm spending more of that time working out, and I'm spending more of it, just focusing on myself. I'm reading new scripts. I’m choosing to use my free time better. I don't know, I'm really grateful for a hectic schedule. Personally, I think that just works for me.

JOHN: I totally get it. You know, some people need to keep the calendar full. Need to keep the weeks busy. I completely understand that, for sure. So tell me this, what do you have in the pipeline? How can folks keep up with your journey? Or do you have any productions coming up you want to share with the listeners?

PORTER: Yes, absolutely. We got two. So we're already starting to get things set in motion for the first show of next season for Lamar Theatre. Oh, it's called Ugly Lies the Bone. Really interesting piece about a veteran who returns from Afghanistan with some burn victims, or with some burn wounds. She's been in the hospital for 14 months. She's getting readapted into her life, and it's this dark comedy about or more of a tragic comedy. I'm not exactly sure how I'd phrase it, but just in kind of the way that life is funny and sad. I want to say that's also a similar theme into this show that I'll be directing and producing at my house over the summer. It's going to be a very interesting project. It's called Art Duty by Daniel Prillaman. It's this sort of Neo-absurdist piece about our two main characters, our guards, guarding this piece of art and us trying to ascertain the meaning of what it is, and enjoy these other people coming to see the art, who are these off the wall characters who are kind of helping set the tone of this slightly postmodern world that we're that we're living in and exploring in this world that film has given us.

JOHN: Yeah, very neat. So if someone's listening and they want to attend, do you have like, a specific number of people you're inviting? You said it's in your home. So I imagine it's not like 100 right?

PORTER: I think we're going to be able to, so we haven't put anything out yet, just because we don't exactly know our seating structure is. We know it can either be 20 to 24. We’ve been getting measurements on different chairs. But yeah, we're trying to figure things out. And then we're hoping in the next few weeks to have some sort of a Google Doc out there. It's going to be $1 down as far as payment. Pay what you can, but just to reserve your seat, get $1 in. And then we'll be happy to have you from there. If that’s all you’ve got, we're happy to take it. We're just some kids putting on a show.

JOHN: Well, once again, more experience to add to your list of things you’ve got going on, and you get to put yourself in the director role this time. So that's really neat. And also, I feel like the small number, you know, 20 to 25, makes it more intimate, and they get to be a part of the show. It's very immersive. So we're running a little low on time, but let me ask you this before we end things off. A quick question. What would you like your legacy to be, not so much in a grand sense necessarily, but if someone described your creative work in one sentence, what would you hope that they would say?

PORTER: I would like for people to say, this isn't fully reflective of maybe my time at Lamar, but I would like for people to say that my work feels political without slapping you in the face with it. That's what I want people to take away from my art.

JOHN: Fantastic. Alright Porter, thanks again for joining me today. It’s been a great chat. As we wrap up another episode, please make sure to search LU Moment, wherever you get your podcast to keep up with the events, activities, programs and people right here at Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô. This is John Rollins, your host. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.