Lindsay Porter ’86 was no stranger to the stage at Denison.
A theatre major who performed in multiple productions each semester, Porter spent much of her college years acting. But there was one thing she never quite mustered the courage to do: audition for the Burpee’s Seedy Theatrical Company, Denison’s improv comedy group.
“I had this comic instinct in me, but I was very inhibited,” Porter recalls. “I just felt awkward and scared to try.”
Four decades later, that inhibition to perform comedy is nowhere to be seen. Porter makes audiences laugh across the country, working as a stand-up comedian. She’s performed everywhere from packed theatres to bookstores, nursing homes to a garage, often sharing the stage with comedians closer to her son’s age.
Though she’s found success, comedy wasn’t always the plan.
“I just wanted to be an actor,” she says. After graduating, Porter pursued theatre in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago, performing in regional and independent productions. She enjoyed her work, but as life changed, her creative pursuits changed too. The demands of raising a child nudged her toward storytelling, which required less rehearsal time than acting.
At 52, she enrolled in a women’s stand-up comedy class at Chicago’s Lincoln Lodge.
As it turns out, she discovered something that she truly loved.
Monday-night open mics turned into paid performances and bookings. Porter now finds herself performing alongside comedians in their 20s and 30s, sometimes in venues and situations she’s never encountered.
“I love pushing myself into these places that I would never be,” she says.
Along the way, she discovered something that her career in acting hadn’t provided: the freedom to be herself.
As an actor, she explains, you’re constantly trying to fit someone’s version of a character. With stand-up, “You just come to it as you are,” she says. “You come to it who you are, and that’s it — you are the role.”
Still, her years in theatre proved valuable. Porter credits her acting experience with giving her a certain ease onstage.
“I have a comfort on stage that just comes from all these years of doing theater and storytelling,” she says. It’s a confidence she began building at Denison, where her mentor, John Farris, first encouraged her to pursue performance professionally.
Looking back, Porter believes she finally found the form of performance that suits her best.
“I think I’m a better stand-up comedian than I was an actor,” she says. “This is what I was meant to do.”
For students contemplating their own paths after Denison, Porter’s journey offers a reminder that it’s never too late to try something new.
“Don’t be afraid to dive into something that is very, very specific to you, because that’s what makes people stand out, and that’s what connects,” she says.
