Beth Porter

Beth Jane Porter (May 23, 1942 – August 1, 2023) was an American stage, film and television actress and writer, who worked in Britain for most of her career. She became a British citizen in 2014. Early life Beth Porter made her first professional appearance at age 12 in a Westchester County touring company. She studied acting on scholarship at the Stratford Connecticut Shakespeare Festival and with Helen Menken at the American Theatre Wing before completing dramatic studies at Bard College, New York University, and Hunter College at The City University of New York [CUNY]. Career After appearing in the American premiere of Jules Romains's Donogoo in 1961 at the Greenwich Mews Theatre, Isaac Babel's Sunset at the Chelsea Theater Center in 1966, and later that year as the star of David Starkweather's Ascent at The Playwrights Workshop, Porter was chosen as a member of original Obie Award-winning New York LaMaMa Troupe under director Tom O'Horgan (Hair), where she starred in the play and later film of Futz!, and featured in Paul Foster's Tom Paine and Melodrama Play by Sam Shepard. A critic declared of her co-starring role in Futz!: "Beth Porter makes the Whore of Babylon look like the Singing Nun." Ellen Stewart and Tom O'Horgan invited Porter and her Scots husband Peter Reid to co-found the first foreign branch of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, based in the UK. Known as The Wherehouse La MaMa with Porter as its administrative director, it operated as a touring company throughout Europe and guest appearing at La MaMa New York. Porter featured in their plays, including Groupjuice, Little Mother by Ross Alexander, The Hilton Keen Show, Hump, a dramatization of the novel by David Benedictus.