Eric Lamp sums up what is required to be a professional performer: “Show up on time and be nice. That takes care of about 80% of it all.”
He has been singing and dancing since he was four years old. Eric taught himself tumbling on his lawn outside, while growing up in West Virginia. He went on to participate in a theater conference in college, where he performed in a one-act show, Line, written by Israel Horovitz. One of the judges invited him to come to New York to study.
In 1981 he began studying with New York acting coach Stanley Harrison. Eric planned to head to West Virginia after the summer and return to Shepherd University. He intended to do student teaching and complete his degree, where he had double majored in voice and tuba. Harrison told him, “’You want to be an actor not a student teacher. Call your mother right now and tell her you’re not coming home.’ And I did,” said Eric, who collected his degree later. Harrison, who had a production company in Hell’s Kitchen called Network, was an early influence on him.
In the early 1990s, he was on the first world tour of Einstein on the Beach by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. As each show lasted five hours with no intermission, its physical and emotional commitment developed Eric’s stamina and concentration. “I really learned the concept of stillness.”
During his first two years in New York in the early 1980s, he would take dance classes all day and work at a restaurant till late at night.
In the 1980s, he studied at the noted Charles Kelly School of Dance, where he learned tap, ballet, jazz and acrobatics. He learned from Kelly that show business is an art form that is worthy of one’s highest level of work. “It is not to be taken lightly.” Kelly had a soft-sounding bass drum mallet that he would beat time on a drum. “If your hips were out of line, he would hit the them lightly to move them into place, or if your stomach was out, he’d tap you on your belly.” Eric added, “It was old school.”
Kelly got a call one day from the Metropolitan Opera one day saying that they needed two replacements for the show Parade. The next thing, Eric walked into Studio C to audition at Lincoln Center. After the field was narrowed, Eric was asked if he knew how to walk on stilts. “No,” he said. Those holding the audition then said that they were headed to lunch for 45 minutes, telling Eric, “See if you can teach yourself stilts by the time we get back.” After leaning on a ballet bar, he took two steps and fell, and tried again and did three steps and fell. This continued until Eric was able to walk on stilts across the room, thereby clinching the job. This was his professional debut at the Metropolitan Opera as a dancer.
While dancing in Parade, Eric continued to go on two or three auditions a day elsewhere. One was a seven or eight-hour audition for the musical La Cage aux Folles. The final audition was at the Lunt-Fontane Theater. The aspiring actors were either supplied with dresses, wigs, blouses, or high-heeled shoes by the casting crew or were encouraged to bring from home. The audition involved dancing, jazz, and ballet. There was an improvisation test in which Eric was wearing a black bobtailed wig. He decided to adopt the mannerisms of actress Mary Tyler Moore in a way that was “very happy, breezy, and a bit befuddled.”
Amid the grueling process, the dancer David Evans, an actor who had already been in multiple Broadway shows, finally went to the artistic director and said, “Enough is enough. I have to take care of my mother. Cast me now or I’m leaving.” Eric said it forced their hand. “That was the catalyst for them to finish the audition and finally cast the show.”
He got the part. Eric said it was crucial to his theatrical development. “As an actor, I grew up in La Cage aux Folles.”
Eric said that the show operated at the highest level of creative artistry. “When you’re in a room with Harvey Fierstein, Arthur Laurents and Jerry Herman, it means business. It’s not playtime.”
Eric has branched into other artistic endeavors. He was once in an opera downtown when two actors told Eric that he had a unique speaking voice. The pair knew a person who needed English language dubbing for Japanese anime films and introduced Eric to him. Eric has since lent his voice to films such as an R-rated alien horror movie called Demon Beast Invasion. He said that he tends to play roles such as school boys who save the world.
Eric meanwhile really had missed singing classical music. His partner at the time worked at the New York City Opera in the wardrobe department, and Eric would hang out there on his days off. Eric even took a year off and engaged in further vocal study. His first professional operatic job was at the Natchez Opera in Mississippi, then in its first season. Eric performed in the chorus of La Traviata and the lead muleteer in Man of La Mancha.
He is a member of several professional choirs, one of which is at Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan’s East Village. He also works in the afternoon service as a professional soloist at Broadway United Church of Christ, located on west 86th street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He is likewise part of a professional chorus at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, N.J. A relatively new project is being costume coordinator and singer in an opera company in Williamsburg, VA.
Eric has performed in the summer time for many years at Bard College, which is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. He is part of a festival called Bard SummerScape at this college, at which the American Symphony Orchestra, led by music director and Bard college president, Leon Botstein, participates.
He has had other gigs such as performing movie theme songs at the United Nations. One such performance was at Radio City Music Hall, featuring the music of composer Ennio Morricone, whose scores include The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Battle of Algiers, The Untouchables, and Ripley’s Game.
Eric has performed abroad, too. He once replaced a tenor in an opera in Perm, Russia at the Serge Diaghilev Festival, and performed with the Israel Philharmonic in a program featuring the noted baritone, Thomas Hampson.
In a volunteer capacity, Eric is vice president of a company for emerging artists called Utopia Opera, created by Lamb William Remmers (one of Eric’s sponsors). “It’s a labor of love. I’m giving back to a business that I’m thankful to have been a part of. After 34 years, I’m still fortunate to be working professionally.” The Utopia Opera regularly practices at The Lambs, which is how Eric first visited the Club.
In the city, Eric enjoys attending concerts, ballet, opera, Broadway, off-Broadway, dance, and experimental theater: “I love everything about New York and what it offers.”
Eric maintains a feeling of thankfulness. He said, “I’m very aware that I get to do something that I had always wanted to do and dreamed of. On a daily basis, I’m very grateful.”
–written by Gary Shapiro