A Quick-Change Artist

The next time you’re stuck on the Ventura Freeway during rush hour and the driver behind you with a 5 o’clock shadow looks a little impatient, be understanding. It could be actor Mike Michaud, trying to get to work.

Since late January, Michaud has managed to beat the Thursday through Saturday traffic as he rushes from his day job at the Universal Studios Tour to arrive at the Colony Studio Theatre for the curtain of John Banach’s play, “Naked Dancing.”

The challenge isn’t simply being a speedy commuter. Michaud has to pull off a mind-bending role reversal: at Universal, he plays Kohbad-Shah, the evil double-swordsman in “Conan the Barbarian”; in “Naked Dancing,” he plays Frank, an outwardly chummy but emotionally damaged man who befriends a woman gripped by fear of the outside world.

“It’s actually more difficult doing the play when I don’t do ‘Conan’ beforehand,” the Chicago-born actor says. “They’re so different that they feed each other. When it’s not summer, we do three or four ‘Conan’ shows a day. My character comes back from the dead and emerges out of laser light to battle Conan. It gets my adrenaline going. Since I barely make the play in time, I’m really buzzing.”

Michaud, who reckons that he has been in one play or another for three consecutive years (including the Colony’s “Guys and Dolls” revival and Rafael Lima’s “El Salvador”), has none of Frank’s innocence. Not after his years in Chicago. “I grew up in the projects, worked for the phone company after Catholic high school, and then did some male stripping. A pal took me to see the Steppenwolf theater company, and I saw what real acting was.”

Michaud knew his future was either in New York or Los Angeles, “so I flipped a coin. Heads was L.A., tails was New York.

“Boy, am I glad it landed heads.”