SM: I think if we want people to relate to the show, then the idea really is that I always said, If every mother in that audience doesnt ultimately want to hug Evan, then were not doing the right thing. We want everyone to essentially be kind and feel a warmth about our show. They werent sweaty until you started worrying that they were sweaty, which made them sweaty, so you put them under the hand dryer in the bathroom. Whats happened is theres dozens of shows. So you heard TikToks being banned. Its just assaultive. Yeah, absolutely. We shouldnt. I think its going to be that experience could exist, but it wont be the same. Why its so hard to get answers on long Covid. Whats it like to create theater in this age, in this age of digital? Audition season's in full swing, so I thought I'd share a clip from my self-tape for the Dear Evan Hansen national tour! I look at Rent being really a grandfather to Dear Evan Hansen happening. It was that and Angels in America were very big deals. SL: No, Alana is She is desperate to keep a bright smile on and to show everybody how great she is. SM: Shows have changed so much. The first performance was in July 2015. I was like, Oh, theyre going to do another bad Facebook. By the way, Facebook is bad in many ways, and as youre seeing with a lot of things that are happening right now from the murder to the suicides that are happening, not just that but fake news. . Or something like a Snapchat, of course the filters would be tasteless, like, Hey, lets make everyones face funny.. SL: Theres going to be a moment when those feel like dinosaurs. Ben Platt plays the title role, reprising the performance that he originated on stage six years earlier. You see how this kind of thing can actually happen. The national tour of Dear Evan Hansen plays Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 2 PM and 8 PM, and Sundays at 1 PM and 6:30 PM through March 5 at the Eccles Theatre (131 South Main Street, Salt Lake City). Shes trying to reach people. Also, don't worry if . The authors adapted the novel from the original Broadway musical of the same name, which they also wrote. Get away from it all. SM: Heidi Hansen, yeah, Evan's mom. It just continues. SM: It does start with a 17-year-old boy alone in his bedroom scrolling through social media. SL: Then there are a lot of expressionistic approaches to the internet, which is like fractured images and text. She is surrounded by friends, but really, she doesnt have many. Getting back to how you do theater, do you feel good about theater now that people ? A battle over freedom of expression at a Concord, N.H., elementary school. When I first heard the song Anybody Have a Map? which was our third or fourth opening number to the show. Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. Just even the handset was like, Thats interesting. 3. You had the memories of when you saw it, when you didnt feel acquainted, but you couldnt revive those feelings. That requires a series of readings, workshops and developmental productions outside of Broadway to really see what you have and to learn from audiences and all of that. Then at the same time, when you have this going, this fake news and where it leads to, how do we get back to community? Then we brought in the great director, Michael Grief, whos done Rent and Next to Normal. He also brought in his own interpretations. Whats important now when youre doing that as youre moving to Broadway? Ive gone to theater in New York my whole life. Spoilers for the show and a trigger warning for discussion of ableism and suicide after the jump. There is feeling like Its disturbing how real it feels. I think thats what makes it special. Its like somebody without skin. People have said to me, theyre sure he has Aspergers or something else. It is an awful, awful thing he does. Yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt finally teamed up for the inevitable back-to-back Best Musical mash-up of Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen. 2 sentence. SM: I just think its an incredible conversation starter, and when you start talking about these things, all kinds of good can come from it, not just in terms of being mindful, and maybe youre too disconnected from the world by being on your phones, but also, we have issue of loneliness, and people bring what theyre going through to the show, so mental illness, suicide prevention. DEAR EVAN HANSEN, the winner of six 2017 Tony Awards including Best Musical and the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. I do feel like people are hungering for something that is ephemeral and something thats just here and now, because everything else is permanent and online. Where else do you have to shut it off? SL: We always wanted to thread that needle. Some have argued, for example, that the film's message is toxic. 21 terms. The pillar of internet free speech seems to be everyones target. She has a lot of wisdom from all of those years of pain and family therapy, a jaundiced view of the world. We have friends calling friends. "Even if you've always been that barely-in-the-background kind of guy, you still matter." - Val Emmich, 'Dear Evan Hansen'. I feel like its hard. Stream songs including "Waving Through A Window (From the "Dear Evan Hansen" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)", "For Forever (From The "Dear Evan Hansen" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)" and more. Snapchat didnt exist really. Summary. Letter #6: Evan Hansen. The 13 most cringeworthy moments in 'Dear Evan Hansen' from the lack of chemistry between Evan and Zoe to the odd portrayal of mental health. Shes always trying to help people. Google Pay. But the lies are precisely what happened. CAST: Ben Platt (Evan Hansen), Laura Dreyfuss (Zoe Murphy), Michael Lee Brown (u/s Connor Murphy), Will Roland (Jared Kleinman), Kristolyn Lloyd (Alana Beck), Michael Park (Larry Murphy), Jennifer Laura Thompson (Cynthia Murphy) NOTES: Act 1 ends after Sincerely, Me. I can tell you, because Im a super old person, it was so great not to know anything or have a phone around. An interesting thing is he started with Rent in a lot of ways. Thats what was strong about this, was it? One of the most compelling musical films that relates to neurodiversity and social anxiety is Dear Evan Hansen, a 2021 adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical about an isolated high school senior who becomes the motivational force behind a campaign for mental health awareness following the suicide of a fellow student.. You did a super effective job at depicting how something takes off virally, and you used the set design where the information is just cascading and flooding down the picture of how it feels like your phone is. I think whats interesting about the fake news is clearly, facts dont work to dispel it. I was expecting that. Perhaps the story of Evan Hansen could fit into that format, but I feel like what we have, the musical Dear Evan Hansen, is just that. SL: Totally, and she also represents someone who doesnt believe in privacy. Like, she would introduce herself and then youd be like, Sorry, I didnt hear you. In the beginning of the ad campaign, those faces were actually stock faces that we bought. SM: She is also lonely. I had Jeffrey Sellers and Richard Hamilton on, and Ive been fascinated with theater my whole life. Were all feeling the same insecurities. Thats been the lesson Ive learned. SL: Absolutely. I think thats how the world feels to someone like Evan. He has a cast from falling from a tree, and his mother urges him to get people to sign it as a way of making friends. He had another one on Snapchat, which is interesting. I have been for so many years, and people come up to me and say, Im Evan. But would you have plans to do that, to have a digital version of it after? Hamilton absolutely is similar, and I also think that there is something in a world where everything is digital. Whereas if you adapt a musical into a film, or adapt it into a TV series or a VR, then it becomes that. People bring whatever they have themselves or they know about to him, but hes lonely and isolated. SM: But in 25 years, they may have all been over and done with that panic. I dont know how old you are, but it was mind-blowing, and I went a dozen times. SM: Every show is different. It feels like people want Is theater retro? I was like, Aww.. Start: Today is going to be an amazing d Dear Evan Hansen: I think thats what Evan taps into is, even though what he says isnt true, theres something that feels true about it. Yeah, I often called it, Twitter, a hellscape. I wouldnt want a device on my head or my eyes to take me away from that. Now, that mosaic as we call it in our key art is all 100 percent our fans faces. He finds a family with them. I think theater is going forward in the kinds of stories we can tell. They find their son through him, and then this story snowballs from there. Can I please speak to ?. Thats why people get frustrated. And intellig but, just be yourself!! He has a single mom who is trying her best, but not perhaps succeeding. The musical premiered in July 2015 in Washington, DC, debuted on Broadway in 2016, and later won six Tony Awards in . Dear Evan Hansen: Directed by Stephen Chbosky. They didnt know that Connor had any friends. Its a beautiful song that Benj and Justin have written. In 2020, the Oscars stage saw a "swirling cyclone" of Swarovski Crystals thanks to Jason Sherwood, production designer for the 92nd Academy Awards. START. Evan, in an effort to assuage their terrible grief, finds himself inadvertently claiming that he was his friend. SM: Thats angry old men shaking their fists at the internet. Cynthia Murphy, who is the other mom, Connor Murphys mom, is equally as relatable, and I think it takes us part of her journey to really come to understand her and her fortitude, because she goes through the grief, the absolute horror, the last thing that any mother or father ever, ever, ever wants to go through, and yet shes so admirable because she keeps finding ways to lift herself up and to keep life going. But also confident; thats super important. When Dear Evan Hansen premiered on Broadway in 2016, it drew near-universal praise from New York's theater critics. If Dear Evan Hansen addresses these problems and anxieties, it also explores, presciently, how easily experience can be faked online and how persuasive those fakes can be. We have parents who come with each other on their theater date night, and they come back and they bring their kids. The only thing I knew about Dear Evan Hansen before this point was that the main character had a broken arm. Weve also provided a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation. SM: We dont have a current plan to do that. I like to insult him, but hes a genius on Twitter. Or even knowing phone numbers, but thats another thing. SL: It had been off Broadway last season at Second Stage Theatre, and then it had been in D.C. at the Arena Stage the summer before. We call the social media aspect of the show either the backdrop of our show or the ninth character sometimes. If you have the good fortune to become successful, you do become something more, but the essence of it is sitting in that theater. Will you support Voxs explanatory journalism? Evan Hansen, an awkward, lonely high school senior, struggles with Social Anxiety Disorder. We know that because we hear from them. It was a smart way to talk about hard things. As part of BTPM (Buffalo Toronto Public Media), their beat is primarily Buffalo theater, but . Dear Evan Hansen is a 2021 American coming-of-age musical film directed by Stephen Chbosky from a screenplay by Steven Levenson, based on the stage musical of the same name by Levenson, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul. Its the experience.. Then your other extra characters are also very interesting, like the girl who SL: Alana, who is our voice of social media in a lot of ways. SM: Hes not fictional to me anymore, because not only have I lived with him for so long, but I stand in the back of the theater. Now theyre gone. Steven and the authors and then Michael crafted this story. SM: It gives him something fun to do too. He'll just hold on. Approachable. I start Talkbacks now by saying, Were going to keep our Talkback breath, because I know that you want to go home and hug your children, forgive your mother and perhaps download our CD, because that is the universal thing. What happens to theater going forward then? The unfortunate thing about my kids is both their parents are highly technically literate, and so they cant fool us or anything. Who would find that most difficult? Evan was who we eventually created. If youre not that private, thats why you have that many and stuff like that. I think that is the beauty of Stevens writing. Absolutely. He has just done incredible work, and its so exhaustive and so detailed. SL: Its incredible that that has been happening and happened around the show. YouTube seems to be. SL: Yes, and theyve gotten to that point that a lot of parents get to with their troubled child, where your affection for them has begun to even go away or you dont know what to do. Now its all about Trump. What do you hope to accomplish, each of you? SL: Yeah, it begins with the boy in his room with his computer, and before the orchard, it ends with him finally face to face with his mother, no screens between them, really having to tell each other the truth. Above photo: VOX teen reviewer Sydney with her mom Lisa at the April 28, 2019 performance of "Dear Evan Hansen" at Atlanta's Fox Theatre. Thats super interesting. . You can only reach so many people. Terms in this set (21) Dear Evan Hansen, Today is going to be a amazing day and here's why. Then once she gets the letters, she uses them like shes almost a journalist, like, I got the memo, or something like that. You dont see his head, but you see a sea of faces surrounding him. "Extraordinary. New York, NY, Linda Ray SL: Exactly. Oh very much, so no matter what you do People bringing, its like an old Seinfeld episode, remember? He lacks friends. But its very kind to these people who are struggling to each of them in a different way, which I think is an interesting way to do that. She acts a lot older than she is. SL: I think storytelling is going to continue to evolve into different forms and formats. Its a musical about a high school student with social anxiety disorder and social media problems. Section 230, the internet law the Supreme Court could change, explained. Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of a high school student suffering from extreme social anxiety whose desperate desire for acceptance leads him into a web of lies following the tragic death of a . That may be something else I would pay money for, but for me SL: But its different. - The third letter in "Sincerely, Me". Being as authentic as possible, realistic, organic, the way that you can depict things on the stage, the projections we have on our show are not something you would have seen in a show even two or three years ago. When I was talking to Jeffrey Seller, and he said that he thought that online had so much to do, the conversation thats just continued on and on and on about this show. Its fantastic. September 10, 2021. Well, you do the I-wish-you-were-dead-but-not-really thing. Thats to me, I think, the difficulty they had is they didnt like him. I hope more people will listen to this and come. He is in a total of 11 musical numbers. Dear Evan Hansen poster. Sorry to tell you, but theyre coming. It actually took me a couple of years of watching the show every night to really understand her plight. But they want to continue the relationship. He is somebody in a world of connections who is completely disconnected and desperate to connect, and also terrifying to connect too. SL: Yet, watching it now, you dont feel like its old-fashioned, or you feel like the technology is old-fashioned but the emotions are real and the story, you can follow. For 30 years (as of November 2022) Theater Talk has been appointment listening on WBFO, featuring the insights of theater critic and historian, Anthony Chase, who joins Peter Hall for a five-minute weekly broadcast at 6:45 and 8:45 Friday mornings on 88.7 WBFO with a podcast available on wbfo.org. . Thats one of the things lets talk about how you weaponize social media. But the idea that we need to get Theres no more offline communities, and were not connected offline anymore. Filled with a murderer's row of talented musical actors all chewing into meaty roles while singing their hearts out, Dear Evan Hansen is an ode to sincerity . Ben Platt in "Dear Evan Hansen." "Dear Evan Hansen" has been criticized because Ben Platt is a 27-year-old playing a student. I love her because shes amazing. I think, from scene to scene, that changes, but I think Michael Greif and I have represented the parental point of view here, and theres a line that A lot of confusion over it, go over the confusion, and what is this, and what does it do, and I dont understand it, and its technical. Youll have it in your eyes. SL: Yes. DEAR EVAN HANSEN is "the most vital and important musical of a generation" (Daily Mail, Baz Bamigboye) with "a raw, relevant and exhilarating score" (BBC Radio London, Jonathan Phang) from the songwriters of The Greatest Showman and La La Land.. A timely and timeless new musical about struggling to connect in a hyperconnected world, DEAR EVAN HANSEN is the winner of 3 Olivier Awards .
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