The audience for the Baltimore Hilton Elementary School’s production of “The Body Play” is what would be expected—parents, siblings, and other relatives of the young performers. But they’re all having a hard time watching anyone other than one particular five-year-old boy.
The youngster, Eric Berryman, pliés and arabesques while singing: “Now you see my eyes! Now you see my knees! Now you see my hands!” With a final and boastful annunciation, he jumps center stage and exclaims: “Now you see all of me!”
He’s good!
Resounding applause erupts. The showstopper’s grandmother leans over to Berryman’s mom and whispers, “That boy was destined to do this.”
Growing up, Berryman continued to follow his passion for physical theater, which led him to Carnegie Mellon, where he says he learned all sorts of dance/movement—from improvisational jazz to clowning to Suzuki movement. During his years as a drama major, he studied Bunraku puppetry and dance in Japan, traveled to South Korea to study performing arts, and was cast in the Kennedy Center’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
Berryman, who graduated in 2011, has received a $50,000 fellowship from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts, which is given annually to dancers, musicians, actors, and visual artists in the beginning of their professional careers so that they can continue their training. With the fellowship, Berryman plans to study physical theater with the Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre in Brisbane, Australia, and to attend a Suzuki and Viewpoints methods master class with SITI Company in New York City.
—Molly McCurdy (A’10)
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