Temple Beth Sholom<\/a> in Cherry Hill.<\/p>\nHis young acting career began in the most Jewish of fashions: He remembers his first role as a \u201crandom townsperson\u201d in a production of \u201cFiddler on the Roof.\u201d Later on, he started appearing in shows at Haddonfield Plays & Players in South Jersey.<\/p>\n
Now, Biren is a professional actor who has performed in New York, regionally and on tour. He played \u201cRabbi\u201d in an off-Broadway show called \u201cAttack of the Elvis Impersonators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biren has been part of the touring production of \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the second time the \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d tour has come through Philadelphia, following an engagement in 2023. Back then, Biren said his mother arranged for \u201c60 to 80 tickets\u201d for friends and family to see it.<\/p>\n
Biren is part of the ensemble but also serves as the understudy for multiple roles, including Beetlejuice himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a lot of self-starting,\u201d he said of the experience of understudying. \u201cYou have to be the one who\u2019s on top of yourself to make sure you\u2019re ready to go for everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Local-Arts-2.jpg\")
The touring production of \u201cBeetlejuice.\u201d (Courtesy of Michael Biren)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat being said, nothing can really prepare you for when you get the call, in the middle of the day, [that] I\u2019m on tonight,\u201d he said. \u201cThat kind of energy, that kind of tingly feeling, is really what helps you propel through it. Beetlejuice is such a high-energy role; it\u2019s such a high-energy part. So you have to really be revving and ready to go when you go on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d after she and a male companion were accused of \u201ccausing a disturbance\u201d during the show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had no idea\u201d 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\u2019t even hear about what had happened until they had already left the theater.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crew at Denver handled it completely professionally,\u201d he said. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t really a big disturbance on stage, and we had no idea it had happened. But we laughed about it for the whole weekend afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeetlejuice\u201d is adapted from the original movie, from 1988, which starred Michael Keaton and was directed by Tim Burton; the film got a sequel, \u201cBeetlejuice Beetlejuice,\u201d that arrived in 2024. Biren described the film as \u201cspecial to me,\u201d and recalls watching it at different times in his life.<\/p>\n
He called it \u201ckismet\u201d when the show came along, and \u201cgetting a chance to live in that world for this long has been a real gift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Biren. (Courtesy of Michael Biren) By Stephen Silver \u201cI was always a theater kid, from the very…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":81197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,32712,55646,1448,2830,1311,55647,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-81196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-beetlejuice","10":"tag-michael-biren","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-temple-beth-sholom","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114892478460370855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Local-Arts-1-e1753110390619-263x300.jpg\")
Michael Biren. (Courtesy of Michael Biren)<\/p>\n