Amy Lehpamer

Frank Hatherley interviews the rising star of the Australian production of Rock of Ages (2011).

Amy Lehpamer’s road to musical theatre stardom can only be described as ‘unique’.

How many Catholic girl school educated, classical violin playing, university degreed, WAAPA rejected, self-taught singer/dancers do you know?

Here she is – about to start rehearsals for Rock of Ages, playing Sherrie, the rock-chick, power-ballad lead, a role lusted after by most of Australia’s young, highly-trained actresses.

Full of energy, she’s come from a photo shoot with her co-star Justin Burford. She’s currently an ash blonde. Her amber eyes sparkle. Wearing the world’s shortest mini-skirt and, I presume, an 80s-inspired puffy-shouldered silver top, she says she’s raring to go.

“I was cast back in July but I couldn’t tell anyone. Now I’m so excited to be able to sink my teeth into it.” She has a formidable display of teeth when she smiles, which she does often, and I reckon she’s going to take a mighty bite at this huge opportunity.

Amy Lehpamer (pronounced le-parma) is 25. “We’re not sure where the name comes from,” she says. “My family is Croatian, but it might be from some other remnant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I’m constantly clarifying it but, hey, it’s my name!”

What’s her big song in the show?

“Harden My Heart, by a band called Quarterflash. It’s a really big ballad with all the 80s tropes — the smoke machine and the wind machine all blowing at once as Sherrie sings through her pain. It’s very heart-on-your-sleeve.”

She has an impressive speaking voice, deep and direct. How would she describe her singing voice?

“Oh, it’s a ‘belt voice’ all right, but it goes mezzo-soprano as well and I can get definitely quite low. It’s a pretty big range. I’ve been working on that – I’ve been exploring opera sounds as well as the rock sounds, to give my voice more balance.”

Working on her talents is what Amy has done all her life.

“I decided I wanted to play the violin at age 6. I still to this day have no idea what the inclination was, but I decided ‘violin’, my parents said ‘sure’. I played it very seriously right through my teens, and I got pretty good at it.

“I admit I was a huge showman. I was that 13 year old, moving around.” She swishes her hair from side to side as she mimes bowing her instrument. “I was not a student of Mozart. I was going for Kreisler and the big, fast passages.”

When she arrived at Geelong’s Sacred Heart College (school motto: Virtus vera nobilitas, or ‘Virtue is true nobility’) a rival interest began.

“I auditioned for the school musical, and I was hooked. Every year I did the musical. The school ran a tight ship with those productions, I’ll tell you what. They were definitely a training ground. My first lead was Kim MacAfee [the Ann-Margaret role] in Bye Bye Birdie, and I did Anita in West Side Story, which is a role I will never be cast in again. I had black hair at the time and I took it VERY seriously.”

I suspect Amy does most things VERY seriously.

“I even did Fiddler On The Roof with my violin, sitting on the roof with a full moustache and everything. That was in Year 12, so I was 17. It was a very busy year. My poor mother drove me everywhere. I went to violin lessons, I was in the school musical, I was in the local amateur musical [Godspell for Doorstep Productions].”

So imagine her disappointment when she was turned down for WAAPA, the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, prime target for musical theatre wannabees. She tried again after her gap year as a music teacher’s assistant at a boarding school in England. And she was rejected a second time.

“I was quite heartbroken, devastated. I was very passionate about that WAAPA course. I had great friends that were going there, from Geelong, getting straight in. I always thought to have a career you needed to train. Now I had no ‘in’.”

Instead, she went to Melbourne University, studying English Literature and Japanese. Oh, yes, this is some bright lady.

“I started doing university productions. The first was Jesus Christ Superstar. I played Judas! We had a very clever director who was studying her masters in religious philosophy. My Judas was an androgynous anarchist punk with a mohawk. I had the best time singing it. Having that bass line completely won me over. It was the foundation of me going ‘okay, rock is where I sit’. I ended up winning the 2005 Victorian Music Theatre Guild award for best female performance, which was an interesting presentation.

“At that same time I was studying violin quite seriously at the Con. But it became a wobbly relationship and I ended up putting my violin away and focussing more on university.”

At the end of her second year a friend suggested she audition for a summer job with Tokyo Disney in Japan.

“There’s two parks, Tokyo DisneySea and Toyko Disneyland, and they do auditions twice a year for dancers to play characters like Cinderella. They were starting a new show called Big Band Beat, a live jazz review. I thought, well, I’m studying Japanese, so this would be like a paid exchange. I got the job and off I went, singing Chattanooga Choo Choo and In the Mood quite a few times a day in a lavish production with Mickey Mouse playing the drums and tap-dancing.”

Not like WAAPA then?

“Definitely not like WAAPA. But perhaps I learned more. I was thrown into this cast of predominantly American music theatre grads, who had all trained at Boston College or AMDA [New York] or wherever. They were all very professional and I got my musical theatre education there. I met Josh Piterman over there. He was recently in Australia as Tony in West Side Story. He said ‘do you have an agent?’ and I said [little voice] ‘no’, so he gave me the number for his.

“I came home, I had two semesters to go, and by the time I had finished my last semester I had been booked for Follies with the Production Company and for Shane Warne: the Musical [in which she understudied Simone].

“I’m a total student of my craft. I love acting and performance, I love talking to people about it, and I’m very passionate about it, and that passion certainly got me over the line.”

Now firmly on the other side of ‘the line’, Amy played the lead in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for the Production Company in 2009, and created something of a storm in The Threepenny Opera for the Malthouse Theatre in 2010. As a super-sluttish Sukey Tawdry, she was described by one critic as “unironically pornulicious”.

“I don’t even know what that means,” she laughs, “but I think I need it on a tee-shirt.”

Does she worry what the staff at the Sacred Heart College might say about her latest exploits? After all, Sherrie in Rock of Ages is a stripper.

“In Shane Warne we all wore fluorescent underwear while holding a giant inflatable penis. In female casting you’re either the nun or the whore. I guess I have a big personality and I’m no shrinking violet, so off I go to the whore side of things, if necessary.”

Does she ever think of returning to her first love, the violin?

“Maybe one day I’ll get to fuse it all. Maybe I’ll do a Japanese cabaret playing violin with a bit of Croatian mixed in the background and me singing ‘Virtus vera nobilitas’.”

She’s laughing heartily at the thought. But I wouldn’t put it past her.

Images: Top - Amy Lehpamer and Justin Burford. Photographer: Jeff Busby. Middle - Amy Lehpamer. Lower - The company of Rock of Ages. Photographer: Jeff Busby.

Rock of Ages opened at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne on April 9, 2011.

Article originally published in the March / April 2011 edition of Stage Whispers.

Free promotional DVD of Rock of Ages with the March / April 2011 edition of Stage Whispers.

Further Reading

Latest News - Amy Lehpamer cast as Maria in 2015 production of The Sound of Music

Our interview with Amy's co-star Justin Burford.

Review.

Interview with Producer Rodney Rigby.

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