Michael Biren. (Courtesy of Michael Biren)
By Stephen Silver
“I was always a theater kid, from the very beginning,” Cherry Hill native Michael Biren said in a recent interview. “I kind of grew up in it. I didn’t have a choice.”
His mother was a dancer, while his father was the cultural arts director at the old JCC in Cherry Hill.
“By the time I was born, I was right in dance class, I was right in the ensemble of whatever show they were doing at the JCC. I was just always a part of it.”
Biren went to Clara Barton Elementary School, Rosa International Middle School, Cherry Hill West High School and Muhlenberg College, and he grew up going to Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill.
His young acting career began in the most Jewish of fashions: He remembers his first role as a “random townsperson” in a production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Later on, he started appearing in shows at Haddonfield Plays & Players in South Jersey.
Now, Biren is a professional actor who has performed in New York, regionally and on tour. He played “Rabbi” in an off-Broadway show called “Attack of the Elvis Impersonators.”
Biren has been part of the touring production of “Beetlejuice” for nearly three years, since the tour first launched, and he has been part of more than 900 performances. He returns to the region when the show comes to the Academy of Music from July 29 to Aug. 3.
It’s the second time the “Beetlejuice” tour has come through Philadelphia, following an engagement in 2023. Back then, Biren said his mother arranged for “60 to 80 tickets” for friends and family to see it.
Biren is part of the ensemble but also serves as the understudy for multiple roles, including Beetlejuice himself.
“It takes a lot of self-starting,” he said of the experience of understudying. “You have to be the one who’s on top of yourself to make sure you’re ready to go for everything.”
The touring production of “Beetlejuice.” (Courtesy of Michael Biren)
He added that he runs through the show as the Beetlejuice character once every few weeks in his hotel room or apartment, in addition to regular rehearsals.
“That being said, nothing can really prepare you for when you get the call, in the middle of the day, [that] I’m on tonight,” he said. “That kind of energy, that kind of tingly feeling, is really what helps you propel through it. Beetlejuice is such a high-energy role; it’s such a high-energy part. So you have to really be revving and ready to go when you go on.”
And yes, Biren was performing in the show on the night in September of 2023 when a member of Congress, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), was escorted out of a Denver performance of “Beetlejuice” after she and a male companion were accused of “causing a disturbance” during the show.
“We had no idea” at the time, he said, remembering that he and other members of the cast had rented a cabin to relax on a day off and didn’t even hear about what had happened until they had already left the theater.
“The crew at Denver handled it completely professionally,” he said. “There wasn’t really a big disturbance on stage, and we had no idea it had happened. But we laughed about it for the whole weekend afterward.”
“Beetlejuice” is adapted from the original movie, from 1988, which starred Michael Keaton and was directed by Tim Burton; the film got a sequel, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” that arrived in 2024. Biren described the film as “special to me,” and recalls watching it at different times in his life.
He called it “kismet” when the show came along, and “getting a chance to live in that world for this long has been a real gift.”
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.