Ray Porter acted in school plays...

Ray Porter acted in school plays and musicals as well as civic theater in his home town of Kokomo, Ind. After high school graduation, he turned down a good job offer to study acting at Calarts. In his final year of college, Porter, 23, is looking forward to putting years of training to work.

In the second grade, I was in the Christmas pageant. I played second cowboy, and I had a line something to the effect of, “I’d like to see you do some dancing with them legs.” And it got a laugh. To hear that response was really something else. That was the first time I got an inkling that this is something I would like to do.

I was in a drama club at junior high, and I started doing plays. Ethel Duncan was the teacher, and she was wonderful. She was excited about doing plays, and she wanted us all up there doing things, and she was tough. I started getting more and more involved in doing theater.

Right out of high school, I received an offer to start at 15 or 20 a year to do morning news at a Kokomo radio station. It was very attractive. It was a very tough choice. I questioned my sanity at certain points along the way. But acting was what I wanted to do. I felt that this was more engaging, that this would be the more exciting choice.

The program here is intense. It takes you through so much intense physical and vocal training and basically opens you up to making choices. I think that probably the greatest lesson that I’ve learned here is the ability to see all of the possibilities and see all of the choices within the script.

Acting is very exciting. I have no idea what it’s like to be a murderer, and yet I’m called upon to play a murderer. So then I have to look at the script and work at it until I find out: What makes this guy a murderer? How can I build this character effectively so that he conveys what he is about? That’s work, and it’s exciting, because when you finally tap into that, it’s like, “oh my goodness, here it is. This is why he reacts in this way.” That affects your performance, and it affects the character.

Acting really takes you to the edge a lot of times, emotionally and spiritually and physically. It’s a very kinetic kind of a thing. You’re constantly changing. The chances of losing a little stability along the way are a real possibility. What takes you out of yourself is that in many cases the character you’re playing is reacting and acting upon events in ways that you yourself wouldn’t. I wouldn’t kill the king to be the king, but Macbeth would.

I did a Shakespeare festival this last summer up in Bakersfield. One night we were having a discussion with some adult students who were taking a course in British literature. One man in the back raised his hand, and he said, “I’m 47 years old; I’m a police officer, and I’ve never seen theater before. I saw the play last night; I came back to see the play again tonight, and I’m going to come back again tomorrow.”

He saw something that affected him, intrigued him, excited him, and it enriched his world. I think one of the most noble things you can say about this craft is that it does enrich people’s lives and maybe encourages them to go read a book or to see more plays, and it enriches their sense of culture.

Acting is what I want to do, and I want to see this through. I would not want to be working at some radio station and think, “I might have been able to have a career as an actor.” I want to make sure. I want to see if I can.

I don’t lie awake at night, quaking from the fear of graduating. May is coming no matter what happens. It’s a transition, going from here to the real world.

I’m going to miss this place. This place allows you to do a lot. I’m doing three plays right now and a film. I hope I’m this busy when I graduate.

If there’s work available, well, I’m going to get it. I’m going to audition for it. I’m going to work toward getting work. It’s not something that scares me, though. I love what I do too much to be frightened of it.