Michael Arden

“It's exciting to share an art form that I would never have imagined sharing with the deaf community. Doing musicals, it's not like, 'Oh, I'll do a musical with a deaf person.'”

“Sometimes, disaster can inspire ingenuity.”

“Growing up as a gay boy in West Texas, I definitely felt like a bit of an outcast sometimes - that there was a world that I would never be a part of.”

“My dream would be to have 50 people in a show with each person from a different country.”

“Before working with Deaf West, I had never met a deaf person, and now I can't imagine life without ASL.”

“My favorite collaborator is Dane Laffrey, who designed the set for 'Once on This Island,' but we've worked together since high school, when he was my roommate.”

“My grandparents, Jim and Pat Moore, were an incredible couple. They drove me to the community theater, where I did plays as a kid.”

“I read 'Huffington Post' as if I am a shareholder.”

“I found that the same things I loved about performing were the things I liked about directing and creating a piece - striking a chord that was in tune with the world and was reflecting back what I saw, just from a different angle.”