About Lisa
Lisa Anne Porter is a professional actress, director and voiceover talent , as well as a professional voice/dialect coach, a voice/acting/text professor and a designated Linklater voice instructor.
She has performed with numerous repertory companies and Shakespeare festivals throughout the country including the American Conservatory Theatre, California Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare/Santa Cruz, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Syracuse Stage, Geva Theatre Center, Shakespeare Festival/LA, Shakespeare & Company, Sacramento Theatre Company, the Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Interact Theatre Company, and Boston Theatreworks. She is a member of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company where she played Laertes in HAMLET and Buckingham in RICHARD III. She also co-directed and starred in their touring show A WILL OF ONE’S OWN. At the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, she originated the roles of Bunny in Clair Chafee’s EVEN AMONG THESE ROCKS and Vivian in Naomi Iszuka’s ALOHA SAY ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS. At the Magic Theatre, she originated the title role of Becky in Monika Monika’s THE PHARMACIST’S DAUGHTER.
Reviewers have described her work thus: “Porter is especially good; in fact her performances this season have been nothing short of splendid”(Backstage West); “Porter does a beautiful job of growing in the role, gaining gravity and depth without losing her comic edge”(San Francisco Examiner); “The salesman is smitten. As embodied by Lisa Anne Porter, it’s no wonder. Her Becky is all contradictions: sexy and vulnerable, scared and aggressive”. (San Francisco Chronicle);“In the production, one particular element justifies the casting: the irresistibly charming Lisa Porter as Petruchio”(Boston Globe); "Lisa Anne Porter is magnetic as the focal point of most of the modernism, portraying Julie, disguised as Fredric, with captivating comic-poignant bravado, weakness, determination, vacillation and cold fury."(San Francisco Chronicle).
She has a B.A. in Theatre and American Studies from Wesleyan University. She has an M.F.A. from the American Conservatory Theatre. Her thesis performance was Anna in TWO, a two person play in which she starred with veteran actor of film, theatre and television, Nehemiah Persoff. She underwent a rigorous three year program of study and a highly selective international audition process to become a designated Linklater voice instructor. In addition to directing main stage productions and teaching voice, voice/verse, acting and dialect in the BFA program at Syracuse University, Lisa is on the faculty of Shakespeare & Company, the MFA program and Summer Training Congress at the American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre and the Academy of Art University.
In her first year at Syracuse University, she was awarded one of three campus wide Faculty Inspiration Awards. Along with her teaching and directing responsibilities, she has served as the faculty advisor for the Young Actor’s group, a theatre collaborative of BFA students and special needs actors from the community and for the SyracuCycles, a biking team that has raised over $70,000 for the San Francisco Aids Foundation.