This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jackson Klein: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Jackson Klein. Welcome back to our re-release of season four of The Ensemblist, Broadway at Every Stage. In this series, co-creators Mo Brady and Nika Graf Lanzarone sat down with six seasoned Broadway actors to dive into their decades-long careers. They discussed getting started in the theater, the ups and downs of life on the stage, and their longevity in show business. This week, we're sharing highlights from our chat with John Eric Parker. After growing up in New York City and attending LaGuardia High School, John Eric Parker performed in the National Tour of The Wiz and the German production of Starlight Express before making his Broadway debut in Rent. He's since performed in the original Broadway companies of All Shook Up, Memphis, and The Book of Mormon. Here's our conversation.

[1:09] John Eric Parker: My name is John Eric Parker, and I live in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The theater world that I stepped into graduating from LaGuardia High School, which then was the High School of Performing Arts, I was the last graduating class out of the old building, which is on 46th Street, was so interesting, electric, and alive in the sense that Times Square was not what we know of Times Square now. It wasn't Disney. It wasn't tourists. It was dirty. It was dark. It was grungy. But Broadway was the bright light in the midst of all of that. As a high school student, most of my peers, we made it our business to be very aware of what was around us. I knew every name on every marquee. I knew when somebody left a show and went to another show because I had studied the marquees.

Right down the street from us was the Kriegsman Photography Studio, which everybody got their headshots done at Kriegsman. So walking to school every morning, I got to see headshots of people who were on Broadway at the moment. So it was all sort of right at my fingertips. And it was also the time when things were starting to change in Times Square into what we know it to be now, where theaters were being torn down and remodeled, and actors were chaining themselves to bulldozers that were knocking down theaters to preserve the history. So it was a really interesting time to step into the midst of all of that. I'm a very tall man. I'm 6'4". But by the time I entered LaGuardia, I was 6'1". So people always thought that I was a little bit older than I was.

And I was also put ahead a year. So by the time I graduated LaGuardia, I was heading into my 16th birthday. But I hadn't really caught up mentally or emotionally to my size. All that to say, hey, there's an audition for The Wiz. There's a revival happening, and they're looking for Yellow Brick Road. My mouth said, eh, I don't want to do that. My brain said, oh my god, I would be too panicked to walk through that door. It took me a while to sort of catch up to that. But I'm glad that I had enough knowledge of what was going on around me to know, by the time I stepped in the door, I kind of had a working knowledge of not only what I was taught in school, but who the people were and what the climate of Broadway was at the time.

I went to CW Post, which is on Long Island. And I'm pretty sure I chose that school because, in retrospect, I was, again, heading into my 16th birthday and wanting to live off campus. There was no way I was going to another state. And it was close enough for my parents to come and get me if something went wrong. And nothing went wrong, but they came and got me a lot, which was great. My junior year is when I really started to say, I got to get out there and start to audition. And I did. There were a couple of non-equity things off, off, off, off Broadway that I auditioned for, and I got. And that's how it all began. My first regional production was the American premiere of Children of Eden, which was amazing.

To stand behind Cass Morgan, sing Spark of Creation every night was like mind-blowing. And after I'd done that, I got a non-equity tour of Pippin, playing the leading player. And out of that tour, I got my equity card. And a friend of mine was on the national tour of The Wiz. And she called and she said, well, I think there's going to be an opening soon. You should talk to your agent and see if you should come in for an audition, just be on the lookout. And of course, again, my size and my emotions kind of catching up to each other. I said, all right, girl, I'm going to check it out. But on the inside, completely petrified. Here is a moment where the universe stepped in and said, this is your time.

Because before I could get up the next morning and call my agent, my agent had called me to say, they're looking for you. Can you go to George Faison's house and sing for him today? And of course, I was like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I can do it. I can do it. I hung up the phone and I was like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, get it together and do it. So I go, I sing. It's like, great, great. It's fabulous. We'll see you tomorrow. Oh, okay, great. So I'll come back tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. I sing, do it again. And then I get a call that I got to pack a bag because I'm going on tour and I'm going to play Uncle Henry and Lord High Underling. And I'm going to understudy Andre De Shields as The Wiz.

I get chills when I think about it because that was the first show as a third grader that I thought, oh, I could be in that. And we did our version of it in elementary school and I was in the dancing chorus and singing and all of that. And there are key moments in my life where The Wiz shows up. So third grade, I could be in that. High school, oh my God, I could really be in that. I'm petrified. Non-equity regional production of it and watching my mother mourn the loss of her father during that. Getting my equity card and then that being my first show. Fast forward 15 years later, my mother gets diagnosed with Alzheimer's and it is one of the last things that she sees me do lucid. So it kind of shows up every now and again. And I think to myself, okay, so if The Wiz shows up again, what does this mean?

[6:35] John Eric Parker: So I go in and meet the tour and I know people on the tour and I go backstage and I say hello to everybody. And I think to myself, okay, go back to theater 101. You're going to be an understudy. Go and introduce yourself to the man that you're understudying. I knock on his door. Hello, Mr. DeShields. I'm John Eric Parker. I'm new to the company. I just wanted to introduce myself to you and tell you that I've always been a fan of your work and that I am going to be your understudy. He said, oh, that's so lovely to meet you. It's so nice of you to come to my room. I'm just going to let you know now you're never going on. And I didn't because Andre DeShields is a consummate performer and he is going to hit the deck every chance he gets with every fiber of his being.

And so I just watched him do that every single night. And then after that, talk about Trial by Fire, I did a production of Ain't Misbehavin' that he directed. We put the show up in 11 days. Three of the five of us had never done the show and I was panicked during that whole process. And one day he just came to the dressing room to give notes and he was on his way out and he stopped and he turned to me and he said, you know, you're turning the show out. And I couldn't breathe. So Starlight Express, the audition came out of the blue. It was for the German company, which is still running. So I got this audition to come in for the role of Elektra. So I sang and they were like, yeah, this is great.

So we want you to come in for the role of Elektra and we also want you to understudy the role of Papa. And I thought to myself, how does a principal understudy another principal? Oh, it's international, so it's not the same sort of jurisdiction. The process was before we learned a note of music, we had two months of skate training, nine to six every day for two months, one day off. And then we learned music and then we learned choreography on skates. And the production was done in German. You then had to learn the language to sing in the language. Artistically, it was like, what have I gotten myself into? But I did it. I was there for 18 months. The great thing about it is you follow then the standards of vacation for Europe.

So in 18 months, I had 40 days of vacation that I had to take. Everything was so close by. I came home for two weeks to visit my family, but I got to see so much of the world. I had been friends with Billy Porter for a couple of years. And at the time, Billy Porter would do a Christmas concert every year. I get this call from Billy saying, I don't have enough tenors. Can you come? And I was like, yeah, sure. This would be fun. This would be great. Now, my mom and I would go to the, at the time, the Broadway Gospel Choir concerts. And I remember her saying the last year we went before I joined was, you should be in that. Fast forward, Billy gives me this phone call. To be in a rehearsal with that caliber of singer was just mind blowing.

I had been friends with Michael McElroy before that, but to walk into that room and have him at the podium was unbelievable. And then we thought it was just for this one event. Concert is over and the next week Michael calls and he's like, I would love for you to stay in the choir. And I've been in it ever since.

[9:42] John Eric Parker: So important to me for a couple of reasons. One, I believe in the vision, which is to change lives through the power of music and service. B.I.V. not only does these concerts, but we have an outreach program with Covenant House, with the Ronald McDonald House, and really trying to get music back into schools and to just try to open up people's minds and lives through the power of music. On a personal note, I think that my presence in B.I.V. as a married gay man who has a spiritual life offers the possibility to others that may not feel like they have that opportunity. As long as I can be an example for somebody in some way by just doing something small, why not? Going into Rent, my agent could not get me an appointment to save his life.

I went to an open call and I waited 10 hours to be seen. Four callbacks later, I go in front of the producers and I'm cast in the first national tour. So I do this tour and it's amazing. It's unlike anything I've ever done because Rent had only opened on Broadway in the spring and we were open in Boston in September. And there was all this buzz and everybody wanted to see it and everybody was affected and everybody was moved by it. I was moved by it. But two years later, I was tired and I wanted to come home. Talk about timing. I put in my notice and then the company manager from New York calls and says, we're short people on Broadway. Can you come to the Broadway company? And that's how I made my Broadway debut.

It gets even better. I go to do my put in as my character, the homeless guy. And at the end of my rehearsal at five minutes to six, I'll never forget it. The stage manager says, so we got to change your plans. So John Eric, you're playing Tom Collins tonight. What do you need? And I was like, well, I need a cup of tea, a cup of chicken noodle soup. And let's start from the top because the blocking is completely different here on Broadway than it is on tour. And that's how I made my Broadway debut. You know, when shows become hits and they become long running hits, they take on a lot of the business of the show. Fortunately, actors have things like personal days and vacations, or they need to take a leave of absence for personal reasons.

Those things sort of fall into play a little bit more in a long running show. And when you have tours of shows and people begin to leave tours, you end up with a group of people that know the show that can come in at any time. For example, Easter Sunday, mom and I go to church. I take her home. My cell phone rings. It's the stage manager. We don't have anybody to play Tom Collins tonight. How soon can you get here? Oh, give me about a half hour, 45 minutes. Perfect. And I go and I do the show. And then I'm there for two weeks as Tom Collins until people come back to work. And then a swing position opened up and they called and asked me if I would swing and understudy the two roles. And at first it was a daunting task because I don't think I really have a swing brain, but I had done the show for so long that I knew where people were in relationship to where my original track was.

I could never swing another show in my life, but that one I could because of the amount of time that I spent there. Rent for me was the time when I really got to see the thing that all theater teachers teach about, art reflecting life. There were a couple of moments that will stay with me forever from that show. One of them was getting a call from the stage manager saying the towers have fallen. Understudy rehearsal is canceled today. And going through the process of what New York was like after 9-11 and our mayor really making an effort for Broadway to continue. And so we're back open and it took us all completely by surprise. A line in the show that used to be so funny flipped. And that line was, I'm a New Yorker, fears my life.

To feel the energy come back at you on that stage in a different way, I'll never forget it because it was mind-blowing and it really showed me the power of what we do as artists, which is turning a mirror to society and showing our world to us. The second time that that happened was New Year's Eve, 1999. The two actors playing Mark and Roger sang, when you're living in America at the end of the millennium, you're what you own. And that was the last time that they sang that song looking into the future. It had become a period piece right before my eyes. Book of Mormon, we had no idea. I thought to myself, okay, Memphis, I'm leaving to do this thing and either they're gonna love us or they're gonna hate us.

But who knew that it would turn into what it turned into. Rent prepared me for it, but it is still unlike anything I have ever done. I talk about it at the theater just saying like, this is not Broadway. This is not how it works. Like you don't get off the train six years in going to your show and see just as many people as there are seats outside waiting to participate in the lottery. There was one night very shortly after we opened that in the audience, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, the cast of Modern Family, all at the same time. And we, the company, went to our company manager and were like, Adam, how come you didn't tell us? We didn't know. People are just buying tickets.

It's like when it crosses out of theater people and the people who love them into when I'm doing jury duty and they're like, what will you do for a living, Mr. Parker? I'm an actor. And the lawyer with a smirk says, what restaurant? And you say, no restaurant. I'm actually in the Book of Mormon on Broadway. And everyone in the room gasps. Then you know we've got something here. Being in a show for six years has afforded me a few things. The most important thing that it afforded me was I never, ever had to worry about taking care of my mother during her 10 years of suffering from and eventually passing away of Alzheimer's disease. I worked with producers who had been in the same shoes and they allowed me to do what I needed to do.

I was able to get married the way that I wanted to, which was lovely and one of the best days of my life. There is a huge part of the actor's brain that is wrapped around survival. And to be able to let that piece go for an extended period of time is a luxury. And I think that for some people, taking advantage of it is one of the best things that you could do because you can then find out what else you're interested in. You can think about your career in terms of creativity only and not something that's going to move you into the next job. Is this going to be the one that is going to allow me to buy a home? Is this going to be the one that's going to have the right people see me in order to?

I could just sort of concentrate on John Eric and what I want to do with my life, what I think the real measure of manhood is, how you take care of yourself, how you take care of your family, and how you take care of your world. I can put some of my brain power on that as opposed to what I got to do to get the next job. Yes, I've done workshop after workshop after workshop while I've been there. I've been able to take leaves to do other creative projects. But it's nice to not have to think about what's the next step in order to be creatively fulfilled and put food on the table. That's the reality of what this business is. An actor that I really respect said once that he left the show because he couldn't reinvest for himself and he couldn't reinvest for the people around him on stage.

And I think about, for example, we got a new swing straight out of college, happy to be in the building, really super talented, and just buzzing with, oh my god, I'm on Broadway energy. And I feel like if I can't reinvest for myself, I can reinvest for him so that he can one day sit in this chair and talk about me as being someone who helped him sort of paint the kind of artist that he wanted to be. I think about those things. And if I can't do that any longer, then it doesn't matter how many trips to Italy I want to take, it doesn't matter how many things that I want to do with my life that have to do with monetary things, I gotta go. I'm not there yet. So I'm gonna keep walking through that door.

[18:29] Jackson Klein: Special thanks to John Eric Parker for allowing us to reshare his stories this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by Mo Brady, Anna Altide, and me, Jackson Klein. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. The second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening! Until next time!