MICHAEL ARDEN, born on this date, is an American actor, singer, musician, and Tony Award-winning theatre director. Growing up in Midland, Texas, he was active in the Pickwick Players, Midland Community Theatre’s youth performing company. He was a student at Trinity School, a college preparatory school in Midland. A Presidential Scholar in the arts, he received a scholarship to Interlochen Arts Academy as a theatre student, where he graduated in 2001. He was accepted on a full scholarship to the Juilliard School, where he was in the Drama Division’s Group 34 (2001–2005). He left Juilliard in 2003 to join the Broadway revival company of the musical Big River.
Arden made his Broadway debut as Tom Sawyer in the 2003 Roundabout and Deaf West revival of Big River. He also starred opposite John Hill in the 2004 off-Broadway show Bare, a Pop Opera. In Summer 2005, he played Nick, a sexually promiscuous gay man in love with a shark, in Adam Bock’s surreal play Swimming in the Shallows at New York’s Second Stage Theatre. He played the title character in Pippin for the World AIDS Day Broadway benefit concert in November 2004. He starred in the new Twyla Tharp musical The Times They Are A-Changin’ based on the music of Bob Dylan.
Arden directed Annie at the Hollywood Bowl in July 2018 for the venue’s annual summer musical production, with a cast including Ana Gasteyer as Miss Hannigan, Lea Salonga as Grace Farrell, and Megan Hilty as Lily St Regis. Following this Arden was slated to direct Jefferson Mays in his one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at Los Angeles’ Geffen Playhouse beginning October 2018. Arden directed the American premiere of the musical Maybe Happy Ending at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA in January 2020. He has worked extensively in television and film
In November 2022 Arden directed a production of Jason Robert Brown’s Parade for New York City Center’s 2022 Gala. The production transferred to Broadway in March 2023 with the cast led by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond as Leo and Lucille Frank. This production won Arden the 2023 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. Parade also won for Best Revival of A Musical.
In his acceptance speech for that award he said:
“‘Parade’ tells the story of a life that was cut short at the hands of the belief that one group of people is more or less valuable than another and that they might be more deserving of justice,” he said in accepting his award. “This is a belief that is the core of antisemitism, of white supremacy, of homophobia, of transphobia and intolerance of any kind. We must come together. We must battle this. It is so, so important, or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.”
Arden was born to a very young mother who also struggled with drugs and alcohol. When he was two years old, his father died by suicide. Arden went on to live with his grandparents who raised him from a very young age in Midland, Texas. He remembers the moment he caught the acting bug when he was only four years old. His grandparents had taken him to see Sesame Street Live and he says there’s a memorable picture of him in which he is just on the edge of his seat, absolutely mesmerized. “It’s almost as if I’m trying to get on the stage,” he says. He also found a great theatrical outlet through his community theater company called the Pickwick Players. Arden also found a mentor at the Episcopal school he attended, his English teacher, Shelly Wright. He says he asked his grandparents to let him build theatrical sets in their own garage.
Arden first came out to his English teacher. But it took longer to tell his Southern Baptist grandparents. They both died in 2014.
Arden got engaged to fellow Broadway and TV actor Andy Mientus in June 2014. He and Mientus had both planned proposals to each other the same day without the other knowing. They married at Babington House, Somerset, England. They have been together since 2010. The two first met in 2006 during the opening night party of the Broadway show The Times They Are-a-Changin’, in which Arden was a performer.