Billy Porter, the openly gay Tony, Emmy and Grammy Award-winning performer and current star of the hit TV series “Pose” — for which he won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in 2019 — has been named to Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company’s board of trustees.
First known by many for his iconic Tony Award-winning portrayal of Lola in Broadway’s “Kinky Boots,” Porter most recently worked with the Huntington Theatre directing “The Purists” last year.
Last year, in an interview with Boston Spirit magazine, he spoke of bridging differences between people — a major job of theater — by accepting our differences rather than “in spite of them.” He said:
We love people through their pain. Not “in spite of”—that’s a different kind of thing for me. I love you through it, because there’s a level of respect for your humanity to start with. You start with a respect for someone’s humanity, and then you can love them through it. You know, I’ve been talking a lot about LGBTQ activism, and one thing I’m vehement about right now is the language surrounding “acceptance” and “tolerance.” Those terms intimate that I need validation from something other than myself. I don’t need anybody’s tolerance. I don’t need anybody’s acceptance. What I require and what I demand is respect for my humanity—as I respect yours. That’s the only conversation I’m interested in having. We cannot move forward, we cannot heal, until that happens across the board. Period. With everything, and everybody.
At the Huntington, Porter has also directed the critically acclaimed productions of “The Colored Museum,” by George C. Wolfe, in 2015, and “Topdog/Underdog,” by Suzan-Lori Parks, in 2017 along with the world premiere of “The Purists,” by Dan McCabe, in 2019.
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