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Chapter 1: What childhood experiences shaped Michael Arden's career in theater?
Everyone who worked on that show believed 100% that if we could just get people to see it, that it would melt any heart that came through the door.
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, a conversation with Michael Arden about his career in the theater and about some advice he once received.
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Michael Arden builds theater that asks us to listen differently, see differently, and pay closer attention to one another. Over the last two decades, he has moved through film, television, and theater, first as an actor and now as one of the most celebrated directors working in theater today.
He has created productions that hold intimacy alongside spectacle and humanity alongside extraordinary craft. From Spring Awakening to Parade, from Maybe Happy Ending to bringing The Lost Boys to the stage, his productions return again and again to questions of belonging, connection, and what becomes possible when people truly feel seen. Michael Arden, welcome to Design Matters.
So happy to be here with you. Michael, is it true that one of your earliest adult performances was starring in a Domino's pizza commercial? This is true. It was one of my first jobs out of after I left school, living in New York, very, very broke actor at the time. So I was very happy to get that job. And were you a Domino's pizza fan or are you still one now? I was not. I mean, I do partake.
My husband is a huge Domino's fan. Really? Good to know. But I'm a Papa John's guy. I happen to be a big fan of Gotham Pizza, which is a pizzeria in Chelsea on 9th Avenue, and they have the best crust. Well, let's be real. Like, all these brand names pale in comparison to basically any, like, New York slice. This is true.
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Chapter 2: How did Michael Arden transition from actor to director?
I saw it recently when it was on Broadway and I hadn't seen it before. And I had read a lot about the fact that it was one of Sondheim's sort of technical failures at the beginning. You know, that it wasn't something that people were seeing. They didn't realize the brilliance. Yeah. I just was absolutely mesmerized by that. Oh, it's amazing piece of writing.
But when I read that you did it in high school, I'm like, what? It took like decades for it to get back to Broadway and you did it in high school. Isn't that funny? How did you get to Interlochen? How did your grandparents even know about a school like that? I had a choir teacher at my school in Midland, Texas named Diane Wisnand.
And she put a poster up on the choir room wall about Interlochen Arts Camp. Interlochen is both a boarding school and a summer camp. And she said, this is a really cool place. I mean, I thought, oh, my God, they do musicals there in the summer. You could audition for it and be around artists all summer. I mean, it was like utopia going there. I made friends I still keep in touch with every day.
My chief collaborator and creative partner was my – One of my friends from Interlochen and I still speak to him every day and we produce together and, you know, we're always returning to ideas and dreams and questions that we had when we were there at school. That's Dane Laffrey? That's Dane Laffrey, yeah.
These things that we think about and are chasing and become interested in as young artists, I think, like, carry with us. Very early on, theater wasn't only performance for you. You mentioned just hanging around and wanting to be near the theater. You also helped build sets. You were designing the lighting for your high school production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
I did the sets and the lights for that production, just to say. Duly noted. Correcting the record. Lights and sets. And sets. So what interested you about making the world as much as inhabiting it as acting as well as lighting and sets? Well, I think you go see a play.
images imprint upon your mind and if mixed with story and emotions so that they are connected when image is connected to catharsis or despair or hope or joy or feelings then I feel like that's like the most powerful artist statement and probably because like seeing plays when I was young it was like the visual blew me away of the depth and the color and the light and how the portals worked and
The scenery was painted, so it was not real, yet it was real. You know, like all of that was like the imprint of visual on the mind really is something I'm kind of obsessed with. So when I was a kid in my grandparents' garage, when I moved in with them, much to their chagrin, I used to like build walls. Sets and elaborate curtain systems and so much lighting.
I mean, I was thinking about this that like, God bless them. I probably like randomly electricity bill, like getting colored lights and borrowing gel and stealing gels from my theater and creating theaters and sets in my garage. It was like my black box. For shows that I would never do. I would just create the set and then that would be it. Did you ever take photographs or drawings?
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Chapter 3: What impact did Michael Arden's grandparents have on his life?
They had to think it was a little strange, probably, but they never let me feel like it was strange. I'm so grateful. When I interviewed Dane Laffrey, he talked about how Robin Ellis and David Monti were the force behind the training at Interlochen. And they both had a really outsized impact on you both. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how. Yeah.
Well, Robin Ellis and David Monti were our high school teachers. He ran the department and a married couple. And they both taught acting and both directed – he directed merrily. David did. And I think what was so incredible about what I learned from it is they never treated us like kids. They just like treated us like adult professionals and that kind of like –
has made my – I think the transition from being a student or a young person to adulthood so much smoother because of that. And they instilled in me like a great sense of – and all of us, a great sense of discipline and unswerving rigor. which was huge and nothing but your most excellent work will suffice. That idea, which has stuck with me.
And then we still invite them to every show and make sure they have good seats and ask for their thoughts and notes. And they give them? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Incredibly helpful. So very, very indebted to those two. You then received a full scholarship to Juilliard's drama division. I mean, it's hard enough to get into the school, let alone get a full scholarship.
At that time, were you primarily considering becoming an actor? Yeah. I mean, in high school, I was interested in a lot of things, but loved acting and loved singing. And people told me I was good at it. So I was like, OK, this is what I'll pursue. But I definitely was like, maybe I want to be a lighting designer. Maybe I want to do this. I want to be a... I took a directing class. I don't know.
But I got into Juilliard and so I was like, well, I better go. I think that's like a divining rod in some way.
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Chapter 4: What role did theater play in Michael Arden's healing from trauma?
And, you know, I just I wanted to be in New York City. And I was excited to study drama as opposed to musical theater because I felt like it would be a more kind of specific type of education and just being in New York. So I got to move to New York and my second day of school was September 11th. Can you believe that? Yes. How did you manage through that?
I mean, I think we all just did it together. It was just a group of kids in a white room on that Lincoln Center asking that question. What are we doing here? Why are we studying the winter's tale when the city is literally on fire downtown? And some people decided that they didn't want to. It's not worth it. I need to rethink my life here.
But in my mind, it sort of solidified my calling and my desire to make art and to be an artist and that that is what I had to offer the world. That that actually might not seem like an antidote to what was happening at the time, but like, Could be a healing force and has been and was after the fact.
So it was a really interesting time in which like we were asking ourselves really big questions for young minds. You said you randomly went to an audition for the Broadway revival of Big River. How does one randomly go to an audition? Did I say randomly? I mean, I got an audition and I wasn't supposed to go to auditions. I was still a student at Juilliard. Oh, verboten. Verboten, yeah.
So I skipped a class, I think, and went to an audition. I think the casting director, I had like auditioned for a couple things and I guess done well enough that the casting director called me back in. And I learned a little bit of sign language at that audition. And I'll never forget, I got to audition with a deaf actor, Tyrone Giordano, who I ended up, I've worked with a few times since then.
He played Huck Finn, I ended up playing Tom Sawyer, and we got to do a scene together. And we were sitting on the floor. He was signing with someone behind me interpreting a sign for him and behind him interpreting for me. And it was like the most mind-blowing experience I maybe have ever had. I never thought I'd be able to share a stage with a deaf actor.
And here I was getting to, and that was because of intricate collaboration. And that was a kind of defining click moment for me. I was like, Oh, look at this. This kind of thing is not a realistic thing. Kind of like how, you know, the scenery wasn't real, and yet it was. So that was a big moment.
And I got the job and was in a dressing room with Oscar winner Troy Kotzer, who won an Oscar for Coda. And I, for three months, was just immersed in only sign language in that dressing room. And I learned just having to want to communicate. That was a landmark collaboration between Deaf West Theatre and the Roundabout Theatre Company. At that time, you decided to leave Juilliard.
And leaving a place people spend years trying to reach requires trusting something in yourself. When Broadway opportunities began appearing, what calculation were you making in your life? Well, there weren't any, you know, other opportunities at the time. It was really just that one. Well, I was planning on doing the show. It happened to fall in the summer. It was a limited run.
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Chapter 5: How did Michael Arden's production of Spring Awakening differ from the original?
And the director of that production, Big River, who I truly credit for my I mean, he gave me my first Broadway role. And that particular one, Jeff Calhoun, this amazing mentor and subsequent friend of mine, he said, any decision you make, you should be afraid of. Then it's worth doing. That combined with I, um...
As I was agonizing about what decision to make, I was flipping through one of my favorite books, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. And I was flipping through, talking to a friend and just sort of thumbing through at the time. And I said, I wish I could just like open up a page of this book and it would tell me what to do.
And I opened it up and I put my finger there and it said, you have to leave that college. And the next line was, it's just like Huck and Jim. And it was the one point in this book where Mark Twain's characters were mentioned and it said the words, you have to leave that college.
And one of the next lines said something to the effect of, the only reason you're staying there is because you're afraid. I mean, it was like I, when I tell you, I like, you know, you see those cartoons of like one of the nine lives leaving the body of the cat. It was like that was like three of my nine lives. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible.
And I like shut the book, turned off my lights, and I was like, well, I guess that's my decision. Yeah. I mean, you talk about looking for signs. Thank you, Ralph Ellison. Well, not long after Big River, you joined Bear, a pop opera, a show that developed an intensely devoted audience and explored faith and sexuality and identity in ways musical theater was not often doing at that time.
What did working on Bear expose you to that surprised you? Well, Bear was an amazing experience because it was like we did it in this tiny, tiny space. So I had come from like a big musical on Broadway and then I was doing this like tiny drama. And I really loved that experience and loved my cast and loved being able to play this like really complex character that I really connected with.
I mean, I grew up in the church and everything. had struggled with how my identity would mesh with faith and, more importantly, other people's faith. So it was kind of an incredible experience. And the fans of that show, I mean, people still come up to me and talk about, like, that show changed my life. That happened right after I left school. I did that show. How did you meet Barbra Streisand?
I met Barbra Streisand at a soundcheck for her European tour on which I had the insane opportunity to sing duets with her, have banter with her, escort her around a stage through stadiums in Europe. Wow. So that's when I first met her. You became one of the Broadway boys. How did that happen?
An amazing director, producer, now friend of mine named Richard J. Alexander, who has directed a lot of her concert work. called me up. He had seen me in, at times they were changing, this Twyla Tharp debacle I was in on Broadway, and said, hey, I'm directing Barbara's European tour. Il Divo had done the tour with her in the States.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Michael Arden face while directing Maybe Happy Ending?
I think you might be right about that. Just at dinner. Looking back now, how would you view your transition from actor to director? Looking at it now, especially in retrospect, it feels inevitable and makes complete sense. But at the time when I started to do it, it felt kind of radical. I mean, when I was a kid, I used to force all my friends to do plays and they didn't want to at all.
But I was like setting up the diorama sets in my garage and I was kind of circling every part of the theater. And so thinking about it now, it makes sense that like Me understanding what an actor does is a huge part of my work as a director. I mean, I think the best directors are actors. I look at Joe Mantello.
I mean, he's like not only the best actor in the world, but the best director in the world. I saw Death of a Salesman last night. I saw it last week. Oh, my God. Well, first of all, what a freaking amazing play. But how he was able to let us hear it was really spectacular. But that training felt like, oh, necessary for me being a director. So it doesn't feel like I had a career change.
It felt like I took the courses, the required courses. Yeah. During your acting years, was there a particular role that changed your understanding of what theater could do through the performance of an actor? I think doing Hunchback of Notre Dame was a big moment for me because it, in a way, drew upon so many different things I had learned.
It drew upon my work with Def West as an actor, my training at Juilliard physically and vocally, and my understanding of light and design in terms of how I was going to be moving through the scenic world of that show. That was right around the time when I started directing and working on Spring Awakening. I was doing Hunchback.
So I was starting to think from a different perspective about what's happening on stage and where do I fit in in it as opposed to just having on my blinders and thinking about the perspective of the character. Which I don't think is actually a great idea for an actor to do. I actually like – I think it's important to be able to turn off the outside eye as an actor.
And so that was an interesting time of struggle for me of like wanting to think about the whole. But when you're on stage, you can only just be and do the actions of the character. But there was a shift during that time in terms of how I thought about – acting and theater and my place in it certainly You chose to play Quasimodo as a deaf person, as he was originally written.
What did that entail in comparison to a role playing him as a hearing person, as he'd been primarily played? Yeah. I mean, as I was reading the novel, it was clear that he was deafened by the bells and that he would have invented language with Frollo. And yet he did have to sing and speak in soliloquy to his gargoyle friends.
And so it was a really interesting opportunity to play kind of the version of Quasimodo that people could see and the version of Quasimodo that existed in his own mind. Yeah, it just drew upon so many things, and it was such a gift. I mean, what a score. What a character. What a story. What a story. I mean, Victor Hugo, man. He was really writing about some real-life things.
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Chapter 7: How does Michael Arden view the relationship between actors and their characters?
It was an amazing first show to see. But I want to talk about how you came upon that show and what made you so sure it would be right for Broadway. I got an email from the producer Jeffrey Richards saying, I really like the work that you're doing right now with Once on this Island. So this was 2017. And there's a musical called Maybe Happy Ending written by two young writers who met at NYU.
And it's about robots in the future who fall in love. And I thought, that's a terrible idea. Isn't that the Jetsons? Yeah. Nothing to do with it. I like, okay, you know, my phone wasn't ringing off the hook. And certainly I hadn't done a new musical. And I thought how wonderful that they would think of me for this.
And he said that the writers loved your work and would I consider directing a reading of it or something? Yeah. And I got in my car and drove upstate. I have a place outside of Hudson, New York. So I had about two hours to listen to the music. I listened to the demos. I was like, hmm. well, this music's really good. It sounds like songs that might've existed forever with the jazz stuff.
And then the other part of the score I thought was just like, Mr. Rogers meets Sufjan Stevens. I mean, it was really beautiful and interesting and not saccharine and smart lyrics. But I just listened to the songs without knowing what the story was. And so then I got home and then I
immediately was intrigued so i started reading the script and i read it in like 45 minutes and was totally wrecked by it when i got to that last scene and he spoiler alert turns to woboon and says shh don't tell her okay that he hadn't erased I was a mess. I was a mess. I cried halfway through, started crying halfway through, and continued crying until the end.
Yeah, it reminded me of my grandparents. It reminded me of me. And the fact that they're robots, we kind of just let them in a little bit more easily because we can't imagine they'd ever... Screw with our emotions. You know, like there is something about that disconnect that I love about theater that their friends affect a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.
And so I wrote back and I was like, I have to do this. I love this. And I had ideas immediately on how it might be done. And it turned out being a very different show than it started. But that kernel of what it's about remained the same of helping of our responsibility to each other.
All accolades aside, maybe Happy Ending arrived on Broadway facing a lot of financial challenges that had followed the production. Early box office numbers were uncertain. Ticket sales were not robust initially. It was really bad at the beginning, yeah. Living inside that period, what felt important to protect about the production while people were still discovering it? I think...
It was useful that it was like such a hard show to do because I wasn't able to like think about how it was being received or how it was selling. I was just trying to make it great because I believed in everyone who worked on that show, believed 100 percent that if we could just get people to see it, that it would melt any heart that came through the door.
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Chapter 8: What themes does Michael Arden explore in his latest musical, The Lost Boys?
And to be able to, because it's a musical, use music as a way to do that. And to explore types of music, rock music, pop music, character comedy songs, things like that. It just was a really exciting opportunity to kind of harken back to the big musical of the 80s that relied on its score to take you on the ride. The rescue started writing this big score.
When I heard it, I was like, well, I know what we have to do. We have to make a big show. We have to like deliver this score in a way that seems like it is working in tandem with the production, the music and production. There aren't that many new musicals where you can still come out of the theater singing the songs. It's true. And The Lost Boys has that, which is really wonderful. Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, people are like singing the songs like going down the escalator. Yeah. The Palace, which is awesome. You expanded the role of the mother considerably from the film for Shoshana Bean, who is just euphoric in this. She's pretty spectacular. And then a little brother as well. You expanded his fluidity, which I really appreciated and loved. Talk about making those decisions.
Well, we knew that what was acceptable for female characters in the 80s was certainly not acceptable today. It wasn't acceptable then, but it happened. And we wanted to give the women more agency, more depth, and more of a seat at that table position. And more involved in the plot. And so, spoiler alert, Lucy especially, she is the heart of this show.
She is the one trying to hold everything together. And the fact that we get to actually give her...
agency and that she is the salvation of this family in the end having been through what many women have been through throughout history and especially at this time is a real real gift to get to do and we wanted to do the same with the character of Star who's basically like a glorified prop in the film but is now you know they're both integral to the story and with Sam I mean it's like
Joel Schumacher was really dropping hints in that film as to as to who he might be. And it just felt important to me that that we explore his recognition and reversal of feeling like his queerness. And when I say queerness, I mean that in like a bigger sense than his sexuality, because I don't actually think this is a story about sexuality.
It's about feeling queer, as we called it back then, that he recognizes that the thing that he has thought would be. keep him on the outside is his greatest skill and his strongest sword. What I love about The Lost Boys is there's kind of like, you can come in from any walk of life and find a character that you can connect with. Well, The Lost Boys themselves exist as both fantasy and metaphor.
What do they represent to you? I think they represent the thing that we think we want. What do you mean? Tell me more. I think they represent the shiny life, the life without responsibility, the staying young forever, the reclaiming one's youth when we feel like it might have been taken from us or is being taken from us because of the responsibilities that are being shoved upon us by our parents.
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