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Popular Edmonton Alberta actor, director, and teacher, who appeared in most of the theatres in the city, typically in comic roles for thirty years. With his English parents and grandparents, Julien Arnold lived in Tanzania until he was five in 1969. He grew up in Edmonton, and studied at Georges P. Vanier Secondary School and the University of Alberta, graduating with a BFA in 1989. In 2006, he completed an MFA in directing from the University of Alberta.
For the Citadel Theatre, he played Feste in Twelfth Night (1999); Bob Cratchit for several years, then Scrooge (2017), Fezziwig and Marley (2024) in A Christmas Carol. Other Citadel credits include the musical, Make Mine Love by Tom Wood; One Man, Two Guvnors, both in 2014; Sense and Sensibility, Evangeline, Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award), The Wizard of Oz, Spamalot, and Travels with My Aunt (Sterling Award).
A founding member Free Will Players, Arnold regularly appeared in summer productions of Shakespeare's plays, including The Merchant of Venice, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
He was an ensemble member of Teatro La Quindicina, where he performed in many of Stewart Lemoine’s comedies, including Cocktails at Pam’s, The Glittering Heart (1990), Shockers Delight! (1993), Happy Toes (2008), The Ambassador's Wives, The Scent of Compulsion, and The Finest of Strangers (2018).
His portrait of the artist in the Edmonton Fringe Festival production of A Picasso was particularly engaging, and earned him a Sterling Award for Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Actor.
In 2018, he played a failed but indefatigably optimistic vacuum salesman in Slumberland Motel by Collin Doyle (Shadow Theatre). His improvisation of an hilarious balletic pas de deux for man and vacuum cleaner, dressed in a sheet artfully arranged as a toga, was noted as a highlight of the production by Liz Nicholls in her 12th Night review.
Arnold also performed for Workshop West Theatre; Theatre Network (The Problem Child and The End of Civilization from Suburban Motel by George F. Walker, and A Skull in Connemara by Martin McDonagh); Northern Light Theatre; Mayfield Dinner Theatre (Spelling Bee); and Theatre Yes in the world premiere of Cat Walsh’s play The Laws of Thermodynamics (2015), for which he was nominated for a Sterling Award for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actor.
For his own Company, The Atlas Theatre Collective, founded in 2008, he directed Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West (Roxy Theatre); Going to St. Ives by Lee Blessing (Varscona Theatre, April, 2018), and Sirens at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in 2018. In 2019, The Atlas Collective mounted Mesa (dir. Patricia Darbasie), in which Arnold convincingly played the role of a ninety-three-year-old widower on the road to Arizona from Alberta with his much younger nephew. In her 12thNight.ca review (Feb 22),
Julien Arnold died on November 24, 2024 on the Citadel Stage, performing in A Christmas Carol. He brought joy to many audiences and individuals, and enriched the Edmonton theatre scene.
Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University
Last updated 2024-11-25