Andy Mientus

Mientus has toured with the first national touring company of Spring Awakening as Hanschen and in the 2010/11 international tour of Academy[5] and appeared in the 2012 Off-Broadway revival of Carrie: The Musical.[6] He made his Broadway debut in the 2014 revival of Les Misérables as Marius Pontmercy.[7]

In February 2015, he was cast as journalist Brett Craig in Parade, for a one-night-only concert presentation at the Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.[8] After finishing his run of Les Misérables in early 2015 and being succeeded by Chris McCarrell, Mientus moved to Los Angeles with fiancé Michael Arden, where he appeared in the show Bent at the Mark Taper Forum.[9] He also reprised his role as Hänschen in the Deaf West production of Spring Awakening, directed by Arden. The production then transferred to Broadway, and closed on January 24, 2016.[10]

In April and May 2018, Mientus starred in the production of The Who's Tommy at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts as the title role. In an interview, Mientus stated that the classic rock score was among the music he grew up with rather than musical theater music, so he was very comfortable with the material vocally.[11]

In 2013, Mientus was cast in season two of the musical drama television series Smash as series regular Kyle Bishop. Following the cancellation of Smash, Mientus and co-stars Jeremy Jordan and Krysta Rodriguez joined the cast of Hit List, the real-world staging of the fictional rock musical created for season two of Smash. The show ran for three performances on December 8–9 at 54 Below.[12]

In 2014, Mientus appeared in several episodes of the ABC Family series Chasing Life as Jackson.[13] That same year, he was cast in a recurring role on the CW series The Flash as the Pied Piper (Hartley Rathaway), having previously auditioned for the lead role of Barry Allen.[14][15] Mientus made history with this role by playing the first openly gay supervillain ever.[16]

In 2017 he was cast as a series regular opposite Leven Rambin, Danny Pino and Chris Noth in Gone, a 12-episode procedural drama series for NBCUniversal International Studios, Germany's RTL and France's TF1, based on Chelsea Cain's novel One Kick. Mientus' character James Finley is a skilled hacker, who was kicked out of his home as a teenager when his family discovered he was gay. While living on the street he was abducted and later rescued by FBI Agent Frank Novak played by Chris Noth.[17]

Mientus worked on a musical of his own with the Brooklyn-based band Teen Commandments (members Van Hughes, Nick LaGrasta, and Brett Moses). Songs from Burn All Night were performed for the first time at Feinstein's/54 Below in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan in August 2016.[18] The official premiere of the musical directed by Jenny Koons and choreographed by Sam Pinkleton was on August 18, 2017 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[19]

On March 9, 2018 Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams, announced that Mientus has written a middle-grade fiction series called The Backstagers, based on the comics series of the same name. The first installment, The Backstagers and the Ghost Light, was published on September 25, 2018.[20]