Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô

We often expect the collegiate experience to unfold in a linear fashion: apply, attend, graduate, proceed. But for Porter LaPray, a theater student now enrolled at Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô, the path has been anything but straight.

LaPray grew up in Vidor, Texas, a town where Friday night football often eclipsed the opening curtain.

 “Around middle school, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do the sports thing,” he said. “I was getting kind of pudgy, and my peers were just built different.”

It wasn’t until he saw his uncle perform in Chicago in fourth grade, that he saw a different possibility.

“That changed my life,” LaPray said.

Soon after, he auditioned for and was accepted into a prestigious performing arts high school in Houston. The audition process was grueling, writing monologues from photos, designing sets from four-line poems, singing, acting, improvising movement. “I honestly didn’t think I’d get in,” he said.

But he did, one of just 32 students selected out of more than 600 applicants. He moved in with relatives and began a hybrid academic life split between rigorous arts training and a full public-school curriculum.

“They made it clear day one,” LaPray recalled. “You’re not going to half art school and half real school. You’re going to both, all the way.”

There, he found the pond had grown considerably bigger.

“You go from being the big fish in Vidor to realizing you’re not even getting callbacks,” LaPray said. Still, he landed roles in “Three Sisters,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Urinetown,” and others.

Musicals, especially, had long been in his wheelhouse. “Honestly, I think I was doing them for validation,” he admits. “At some point I realized that I don’t think they’re for me.”

He applied for several colleges, but Webster University in St. Louis was his dream. Many of his friends got in. LaPray didn’t.

“That really jaded me,” he said. “I was like, whoever offers me the most money, that’s where I’m going.” His mom wasn’t thrilled. “She wanted me to think about it more. But I told her, ‘Wherever it’s cheapest to get a theatre degree, that’s where I’m going.’”

He ended up at a school he prefers not to name, and it was, by his own admission, a detour. “I had too good of a time,” LaPray said. “Got into Greek life. Didn’t take it seriously. I was only there a year, so I will not have those letters next to my name.”

And then, like many young artists unsure of what comes next, he moved to Los Angeles. There, the city didn’t quite take him in.

 “I was doing a couple different artistic endeavors, but I was unfocused,” he said. “I didn’t really have a community. And honestly? I had no money. You can’t enjoy any place when you have no money.” At one point, he was living off a $75 roll of quarters gifted by his grandmother, meant for laundromats, stretched to buy groceries. “There was probably a full two weeks where I was living off that quarter tub.”

After 10 months in LA, he came home.

 “I’d run into people at Walmart, and they’d say, ‘Thought you were in Houston?’ or, ‘Weren’t you living in Des Moines?  Someone actually said to me, ‘Well, shouldn’t have dropped out.’ I didn’t need that.”

Eventually, he landed at Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô less out of grand design than proximity.

“I mostly came back because it was close,” LaPray said. “But I didn’t realize how much I was going to appreciate what I got myself into.” His expectations were modest. “When I enrolled, I thought, maybe I’ll just get my degree and teach theatre.” Now, he’s thinking bigger. “I want to be part of the scene. I want to be in Houston.”

LaPray has come to see Lamar as a kind of launchpad. His professors aren’t just instructors, they’re embedded in the very scene he hopes to break into. “They work at the Alley, Main Street Theater, Stages,” he said. “Rec Room is one I love, founded by one of my PVA teachers.”

He recently attended a show produced by his high school teacher, starring his current director, and helmed by someone he interviewed with for a coveted internship at the Alley. “I didn’t get the internship,” he said, “but I just loved talking to those people. It’s like: ‘Whoa, my world’s tightening in. There’s a pipeline here.’”

This summer, LaPray has stacked his plate high: summer classes, extra work hours, a possible radio play voiceover gig. “I feel like I’m always where I’m supposed to be,” he said. “If I wasn’t supposed to be there, I wouldn’t be there.”

He’s also been mulling over ideas for original work of his own. One concept he’s explored involves a couple returning to their home after a natural disaster, navigating both the physical aftermath and the emotional fallout.

“I’ve been thinking about how people process collective trauma differently,” LaPray said. “Especially when it challenges their beliefs or makes them feel personally called out. That tension, how people hold on to or shift their ideology when everything around them is changing, is something I keep coming back to.”

LaPray's love of new work isn’t hypothetical, he acted in the world premiere of “The Self Destruction of Emma James,” a production helmed by its playwright Kate Brennan from Pennsylvania. “The rehearsal process was rushed, but it was a total treat,” he said. “I played six different characters in an hour-long show. I was sprinting the whole time. Every time I was offstage, I was in a quick change.”

This summer, he’s making his directorial debut with “Art Duty,” a sharp neo-absurdist comedy written by Daniel Prillaman which he discovered on New Play Exchange. “It’s funny, but it’s also unsettling,” he said of the show, which explores meaning, labor, and the fragility of purpose in a tech-saturated future. “I love when a message can come through humor.”

At LU, up next is “Ugly Lies the Bone,” the first show of Lamar’s new season, opening in late September. The play follows a veteran returning home after 14 months in a hospital, recovering from traumatic burns.

“That makes it sound really heavy, and it is at parts,” LaPray said. “But her world hasn’t adjusted to her return either. People don’t know how to act. There’s one character who’s a little tone-deaf, never really says the right thing. So even though the subject’s serious, it doesn’t stay heavy the whole time. It can’t. We wouldn’t survive if it did.”

Which feels like something of a personal motto. Theater, for LaPray, isn’t just a calling, it’s a form of survival. “I know a lot of things I tried and couldn’t do,” he said. “Now I’m more focused on what I can do.”

To learn more about Porter,  check out his podcast episode on the LU Moment here: .