Video: Michael Arden Is Maybe the Happiest Director on Broadway

Welcome to Backstage with Richard Ridge

Michael Arden is one of the most in-demand directors. He won the Tony for his work on Parade

And this season he has directed one of the most beautiful, heartfelt musicals

Maybe Happy Ending, which stars Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen. Coming up for him are the musicals The Queen of Versailles

which welcomes back to Broadway Kristen Chenoweth and the Lost Boys. And I caught up with Michael here at The Legendary Sardis

You have directed one of the most beautiful and heartfelt musicals of the season

Maybe Happy Ending. How did it come about for you to get involved in this? So a few years ago, 2017 I think it was

I just got sent a script from our great producer Jeffrey Richards

and he said, here's this crazy script. These kids have won the Richard Rodgers Award for this show called Maybe Happy Ending

They wrote it in Korean first, and now they've translated it into English and were looking to do an American production

In fact, I pulled up the email the other day just to, you know, I searched my inbox and found it

And he said, I think there's something really special here that could be a wonderful Broadway show

And I read the log line about two robots, and I thought, I don't know

Maybe this is not a great idea. But I did my due diligence and listened to the score and read the script

And by the time I was finished, I was just completely blown away

I was so moved. It felt like one of the most human stories I'd ever read

And the score was so fresh and yet so nostalgic. It felt like something completely new and something completely classic at the same time

You know, you talk about that without giving too much away, the story is about two helper bots, right

Yes. It focuses on two helper bots, Oliver and Claire, who are different models

Now, helper bots are like robots invented to help people who also look and act like people

And Claire is a bit more advanced model than Oliver, so she has certain attributes that make her a little bit more advanced

including the ability to improvise with more frequency, the ability to drive

She has sarcasm in the way that he doesn't and some other things

And they meet living in a retirement facility for HelperBot. So it's like, you know, when you get rid of your old iPhone, you put it in a drawer

This is like a big drawer for old robots to live out the rest of their shelf life

And without giving too much away, they meet and go on an adventure to kind of heal some old wounds from their past life

and end up falling in love and poking at the questions we all have about

how you can sign up to love someone without signing up to ultimately lose them

Yeah. They're the most human, even though they're not. So when you know you have an incredible cast in this show

you have Darren Criss, you have Helen J. Shen, I mean, that play the two leads

They're not supposed to show a lot of emotion, but yet we as audience members feel all their emotion

Well, that was something in rehearsals that we constantly battled. I had to say, robots can't cry

Remember, robots can't cry. Because the show is so beautiful and emotional

and it can take you to a place where you do want to cry

But I think there, Darren and Helen and Marcus and Des, that entire company is just so spectacular

And they're doing such nuanced, fine work and so pulled back. It's never too much

It's just right on the verge of sort of machine and human

And at times can like dip into one or the other more

Depending on what the script needs But I'm just in love with those four So what was the rehearsal process like

Because we kept popping in and out during rehearsals And I was like, I want to know more about this show

I mean, it was incredible for me I had never done a musical with this small of a cast before

Because most musicals, you know, have a big company and it was so, such a delight to get to really feel like this tiny little family

and our production stage manager, Justin Scribner, who is a wizard and our entire music team and the writers

It was really fun to approach this and all of us could fit around one table

So, you know, we were able to really dig in in a way that I think, you know

when you're staging huge production numbers, you aren't always able to. but this certainly felt more like a play rehearsal than a musical rehearsal

and to have these actors who just approach the songs like they're speaking

I mean, they're just spectacular at it. And let's talk about working on an original new musical

That must be so exciting because you have the creators in the room with you and you're creating this all together

and you're creating it on the four performers you have up there

You know, there's nothing like an original cast because so much of them is put into it and vice versa

What have you enjoyed the most about working on this original musical with your team of Will Aronson and Hugh Park I would say it been such a journey because we been working on this since 2017 in really Americanizing the story Obviously it takes place in Korea in the future but we really wanted this

to be not a carbon copy or a sort of echo of the Korean play. We really wanted to create this for

American audiences with the authenticity of it being set in Korea. So quite a bit changed. I mean

They were writing new songs. Will and Hugh are the most collaborative people I've ever met

They're so incredibly talented. I just can't get over the fact that they are now hopefully solidified in the lexicon of great musical theater composers in America

But the most fun was saying, hey, you know, I think there needs to be another song here for the jazz singer

Or we're missing this beat. Or what if there were a title song? I mean, the last song that was written is the song, maybe Happy Ending, the title song

which is new to Broadway. And so we have had a chance over the years to really play with ideas

I brought in the idea of seeing Claire's past and getting her backstory

And so then we decided to add those characters of Ji-yeon and Soo-Han that are the film doctors

So it's really been such an open, collaborative process. And they never clung on to, oh, well, this worked in Korea, because clearly it did

You know, it's a huge, huge hit over there. But it really took its own shape

and to see artists who have a firm belief in what they're doing

but also have an openness to collaborate and create something new based upon the people that they are making it with

It's such an inspiring room to be in with this team. It's visually stunning

The design team you have put together for this. It's a little beautiful show, but it's a big show at the very same time

It's a big show. Yeah, I mean, visually, the fluidity of this show is beautiful, too, the way everything moves, the sets and the lighting and everything

It's like an orchestra. Yeah, thank you. So what kind of conversations did you have with your design team of the look and feel you wanted to bring to the show

I mean, I would say that the design process was just as involved as the creative writing process for the show

Dane Laffrey, who is my design partner and best friend of 30 years almost now

We were high school roommates in boarding school together. He designs all my work

We spent a lot of time in Tokyo, actually, working on this design

and kind of taking inspiration from a certain tower there that was built

as this kind of utopian idea of community living. And we took that idea and translated it into the helper bot departments

and then involving our incredible video designer, George Reeve, who did such incredible work

And we really storyboarded this like an animated film. So, I mean, we have a book of like 300 pages of every moment and how it moved and then moving into the idea of how lighting was integrated with that because, you know, we're doing this play in boxes, so there aren't traditional lighting positions

So from the beginning, I really wanted all elements to be integrated and not just kind of a layer cake of ideas

It really, we had to all get in the batter together. And then, of course, Justin Scribner, our production stage manager, was with us from the beginning

And, you know, he was a math major in college, which is very helpful. And we were able to kind of pre-visualize and do so, so much work in the rehearsal process

Like for every scene we were rehearsing, we were planning out the milliseconds of how the set would function and work

We like to call it zero tolerance because there's so many axes of automation and things moving that if one thing is slightly off, it all falls apart

It's like a big Rubik's cube on acid. But we just came together and it spawned from an original idea I had with Dane of how can we create something that really turns on its head the idea of how we process visual information

Now, we're used to now looking at our iPhones, which are vertical. So that was really important to me in the design, that we actually take the space

especially when Oliver is in this sort of claustrophobic first act of the play

and shove it to the center and put the text on top through use of Chiron and video

And we slowly become more and more human. So we're going from this kind of Android visual cue into something more human

which we see with two eyes as opposed to one. So that's kind of how we started, and it evolved from there

And then we knew that once we entered into the memory of James, we wanted to introduce the idea of circular movement

So it wasn't just swiping left and right on your phone or pinching and zooming

It became something a bit more organic. And then by the time they reached the island, we could open up

So it's a world that moves from more technical, cold, sterile machinery

to something much more organic. Obviously created by machinery, but really we wanted the design to evolve

as the characters become more and more human. We wanted the design to do that as well

People come in from all over the world to see this musical I mean I talk to people I like what are you seeing Oh we seeing maybe happy ending You know so it like audiences have fallen in love with this show For you as a director like when you in the house watching the show

and you realize how this musical is affecting people on so many different levels

besides just entertainment, so much more, what that means to you? It's so gratifying

I mean, this was a piece that, of course, when we all knew it was special working on it

in the world within our rehearsal room. But to see audiences react to it

to see nine-year-old kids fall in love with what is happening physically

and the humor and the caper of the show, and next to them, you know

people in the twilight of their lives holding the hand of their partner

or having memories of someone they might have lost, and to see them both experiencing this show

and connecting to it so deeply for both the same reasons and different reasons is just so beautiful

I love to sneak to the side of the theater and watch people from profile

and to see them gasp and laugh and look to each other

And I've noticed people tend to touch each other a lot in the audience here

I don't mean that in a bad way. But, you know, it's surprisingly for a show about robots

it's sort of encouraging people to have a more human connection with the person to their right and left

And I think if theater can do that, then that's our goal

That's the best we can hope for. And so I'm just so grateful to the audiences that have come

who have taken a risk on a new musical about robots with no recognizable IP and kind of a strange title, let's be honest

It gives me great hope in not only theater but in humanity

Yeah. Well, you know, you're a very busy man because you have two. There's maybe many more than that, but two of your next projects

I had the privilege of going up to Boston to the Colonial Theater

to see the opening night of the Queen of Versailles. What a night. What a night that was

I mean, you're bringing Chris and Chenoweth back to Broadway. It's Stephen Schwartz's new musical with Lindsay

Farantino. Farantino. I mean, what a beautiful musical. Yeah. I know you're sort of working on it at the moment

It's coming in in the fall. What attracted you to the Queen of Versailles and the look and feel you wanted to give it

Well, I was obsessed with this documentary. It's an incredible film by genius filmmaker Lauren Greenfield, who, if you don't know her work, definitely check it out

But Queen of Versailles focuses on a woman named Jackie Siegel, who is married to David Siegel, who owns one of the largest private businesses in the world

Westgate Timeshare Resorts. And it tells her story and how she set out to build the largest private home in America

which is slightly based on the Palace of Versailles in France. and Lindsay and I met and bonded over this film at a dinner strangely enough and we

were really interested in in creating something that was about the American

cancer which is ultimately capitalism but more so than that the underlying kind of addiction of

needing more, of this kind of bottomless pit that we feel the need to fill, which is, I think

kind of inspired by the American dream and its fallacy. So very different than maybe happy ending

But it was the chance to really write and create a story about consequence and how we are all

So again, we might feel far, far away from building the biggest home in America, but we all have that desire to accumulate more, to acquire more, to have more in our bank account, to expand

And we're kind of poking the question of like, what is that about? Is it avoidable

And so it's a really interesting show. And it's about someone who's very much alive right now

So, you know, it's somewhat documentary. It's certainly, there's some farce in it

But ultimately, I think it's a tragedy in a way. I don't want to give too much away

but we wanted to write something that was quite complicated and quite damning of this American idea

So I can't wait to see how people react. It's unlike anything I've ever done

And visually, it's so delicious. We get to watch this home be built over the course of the evening as well as take trips back to the 18th century and 17th century France and kind of see the rise and fall of the French monarchy

So it's epic. It's ambitious. And Kristen Chenoweth and F. Murray Abraham at the helm, it's like the most delicious master class of comedy and pathos one can see

So I can wait for it They fall in love with both of them but they fall in love with her I mean the second Kristen walks on stage she has the entire audience in the palm of her hand It so interesting to watch happen Well she a witch Yep

She is so great in the show. She's incredible in the show. I cannot wait for people to see her

And it's high time she originates in a role, and this one is like

I just, it's so it's so perfect for her, and yet so not her. At the same time

I mean, it's an exciting thing to watch her tackle. How she does that, it's going to be amazing to watch

And the set, like I said, the set kept changing and it's bigger and bigger and bigger. Dane Laffrey, he's amazing

So when you two were in school, like, look back at the two of you in school, like, did you ever imagine that the two of you..

Yes, I do imagine it, strangely enough. We had kind of, I think they're called captain's beds

you know, where like your drawers in the dorms are like underneath. And, you know, we lie there in the dark

in our twin beds and talk about theater and design ideas. And I wonder if you could take a stage and turn it upside down

And this was the kind of stuff we were dreaming on. And so the fact that we get to do it together

and people give us sometimes large sums of money to do it with

is a real pinch-me feeling. And then there's The Lost Boys, which I hear is absolutely spectacular

One of my favorite movies now has been turned into a musical. So what attracted you to the Lost Boys and the look and feel you want to give that show

It is, I mean, I love vampire stories, always have. And this one really I found exciting because it was about youth in a way

I mean, it draws, of course, the title draws from the Peter Pan idea. But it takes place in the years when I grew up

So I was a kid in the 80s, and it's about young people, and it's sexy, and it's about ultimately, you know, we yearn so much to, like, dissociate from our family and to break free of the thing we think that takes away our freedom

And yet sometimes that's the very thing that we need in order to be free. So emotionally I'm drawn to that in the story and the idea of, you know, what would you do if you were given the choice to live forever

And why do we yearn for that when actually that's a fallacy as well

Maybe there are some connections to Queen of Versailles in this. But it's sexy. It's young. The score is incredible

This band that I've been obsessed with forever, my favorite band called The Rescues

has written the score, and you're not even ready for this music

It's so, so good. I just listen to it all the time, even when I'm not working on it

because I love it so much. You know, we all fell in love with you first as an actor

Thank you. We did. You know that. I mean, we knew when you first came to the city, we were all doing interviews, like, oh my god, Michael Harden, Michael Harden

What made you move from being an actor to a director? Was there a defining moment when you said, I want to shift into this new direction

Well, I was living in LA and working on a TV series called Anger Management for a long time. It's multiple years

And I was really missing theater. I mean, theater is the reason I got into the business completely

I saw a community theater production of Big River when I was a kid

which ended up being the first Broadway show I was in, strangely enough. And I just fell in love with the theater and the fact that you could change people's hearts and minds

by sharing air with them for two hours. I mean, it was revelatory to me

And so that's always been my first love. And I was working on a TV show and really missing it

And so I wrote a play and directed a play for my friends who were all theater people living in L.A

who were unemployed at the time. Because we really were jonesing to do something on stage

And it just was one of those moments of like sword in the stone, like clouds opened up

And it just felt right. All of the things that I had been circling

I had done lighting design. I had assisted directors. I had worked in producing offices

I had taken songwriting classes. I had been kind of circling everything

and I found in that moment creating a space in which artists that I love could do their best work

that was so fulfilling to me, to be able to create a space, to create a world

and then bring in actors that I geeked out over and other artists, designers, collaborators, writers

that could bring that space to life in a way. It just felt like, oh, this is the thing I've been circling

I'm able to land the plane here and stay a while, and I just love it

I mean, I think acting is something that I kind of get to do every day as a director in a way

It's like part of my brain is so, I'm so grateful for the experience I've had as an actor

because they influence my work as a director, I hope. and maybe I'll get back on stage again

but boy, I'm loving... I watch people perform in my work, and I'm like, boy, I couldn't do that

I'm just so in love with what is possible