Alan Muraoka

Alan Muraoka is an American actor, director, and television performer born on August 10, 1962, in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his long-running role as Alan, the owner of Hooper's Store, on the children's television series Sesame Street, a position he has held since 1998. He also serves on the board of directors at the Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice, an LGBTQIA community activist center and educational organization dedicated to honoring Bayard Rustin.

Muraoka's first performance came at age ten, when he appeared as "The Candy Man" during the intermission of a double feature at a movie theatre. He continued performing throughout high school, where he also directed his first production, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He went on to study in the Theater Department at UCLA, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts in 1985 and receiving the Carol Burnett Musical Theatre Award for performance. During his college years, he performed in several Walt Disney World productions during sabbaticals and summer breaks. Following graduation, he worked with East West Players in Los Angeles and performed aboard Princess Cruises ships.

Muraoka made his Broadway debut in 1988 in the musical Mail, in which he performed six roles. After Mail closed following a one-month run, he remained in New York City and continued building his stage career across Broadway, regional, and touring productions. Among his most notable early credits was membership in the original Broadway cast of Shogun, The Musical. He also spent an extended period performing the lead role of "The Engineer" in Miss Saigon. His Broadway credits span from 1988 to 2014 and include Anything Goes, The King and I, My Favorite Year, and a 2004 revival of Pacific Overtures.

After auditioning multiple times over the course of 1997, Muraoka secured his role on Sesame Street following an improvisation session with the character Telly Monster. He joined the cast in 1998, and his debut episode featured Big Bird introducing Alan to the other characters in a scene concluding with the song "Welcome to the Party." In 2021, Muraoka co-directed the June 17th Sesame Street episode "Family Day," which focused on the diverse families of the show's characters and introduced the first family unit on the series to include two gay dads — the characters Nina's brother Dave, his husband Frank, and their daughter Mia.

Alongside his performing career, Muraoka has developed a substantial body of work as a director. In 1998, he directed an all-Asian production of William Finn and James Lapine's Falsettoland for the National Asian American Theater Company in New York. Peter Marks of The New York Times wrote of the production, "Does the gambit work? Let's put it this way: You should be so talented." In 2004, he directed Sesame Street and Avenue Q puppeteers John Tartaglia, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, and Jennifer Barnhart in Empty Handed and John Tartaglia AD-LIBerty, and also directed Ann Harada in her 2004 one-woman show. He subsequently directed Harada in one-night-only Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS benefits in 2009, 2010, and 2011. In 2007, he directed High School Musical at the Lyric Theatre in Oklahoma City, and the following year directed The Muny's production of the same show in St. Louis. Also in 2007, Muraoka joined the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. In 2009, he directed Urinetown: The Musical at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where he also served as the university's "Stieren Guest Artist" and taught a class on musical auditioning techniques. In 2019, he played the Narrator/Mysterious Man in Into the Woods at the Patchogue Theatre.

Muraoka's television and screen work extends beyond Sesame Street. In 2003, he appeared in the PBS Emmy-nominated special Day of Independence, produced by Cedar Grove Productions. In 2006, he made a guest appearance on the soap opera One Life to Live as Mr. Pravat, a Thai bartender, in a scene alongside Desiree Casado. In 2007, he appeared in a small role on Showtime's series Brotherhood, playing Li Fang, the owner of a Rhode Island brothel.