Billy Porter Thinks UK Theatres Need Free Programmes

US actor Billy Porter has said the absense of playbills in UK theatre is “disrespectful” to performers.

Speaking on Glyn Fussell’s We Can Be Heroes podcast about the ups and downs of his life and career, Porter talks about 'learning to be straight' at drama school in the 80s, to being pigeonholed in Broadway in the 90s. The actor looks back on the moments that encouraged him to be true to himself and to find roles where he can express himself freely.

Porter says on the podcast: "The Arts in Europe in general, is a profession that is respected, revered and no matter where you are on the socio-economic scale, everyone gets it, everyone can participate."

"The only thing I don’t like, particularly as a theatre boy, is that you don’t have playbills at your shows. I think it’s really disrespectful to the actors. It’s a programme that you don’t have to pay for. Everyone’s picture and resume is in it! It’s weird to me to go and see all these amazing artists and you don’t know who they are. We work too hard for that."

The podcast also touched on his sexuality, where being queer was a liability for him “for decades”. 

He said: “I went to drama school. I learned how to be straight in drama school. In retrospect, I can go back to this drama school that traumatised me and go: ‘Oh, they were actually trying to make me marketable.’ I spent the first 25 years of my career trying to be perceived as straight enough so I could eat.” 

Porter also speaks about realising he has been "pigioenholed" while watching actor Jeffrey Wright in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: “I sat there and watched Jeffrey Wright play the only black character in this epic drama. Seven hours." 

“He was black, he was queer, he was a nurse, a moral compass. I was like: ‘That’s who I am.’ I had never seen anything like it and I wept because I knew I was in such a pigeonhole that no one would ever see me like that.”