SL: Yes, and he looks around as I think many of us do at social media, and sees the world of people who are fluent and who seem to be able to navigate this world of communication that he finds baffling. Were on Apple Podcast, Google Play Music, TuneIn, Stitcher, SoundCloud and more, or just visit recode.net/podcasts for more. Gain full access to show guides, character breakdowns, auditions, monologues and more! What happens? Weve gone through quite a few in the years, and it really is basically the two mothers in the morning dealing with their respective families not so well, and then feeling at a loss. That's the big, like, that's number one: be yourself. How do you feel like you can work into that, because he sells fake news? 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. Thats the part of the story thats interesting to us. How about do you feel about this, Steven? Fun Fact: Tom queued for . Stacey and Steven, thanks for coming by. Social media used to be free. SL: Yes. She has a very bitter sense of humor. How did you glom on to this idea, because at the center of most shows, its the human heart essentially, but this really does the trends of the day do matter here in terms of whats happening to us is becoming a lack of interconnectedness? And the father? 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. I wouldnt want to lose that. . I was looking at the social media on the show. You talked about it at the beginning, but your show has benefited from that too. VOX teens experienced a matinee performance of "Dear Evan Hansen" at the Fox Theatre, thanks to the generosity of VOX community partners Most Valuable Kids of Greater Atlanta and Broadway in Atlanta. FLIP HTML5 is a Interactive html5 digital publishing platform that makes it easy to create interactive digital publications, including magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. I saw the early versions of it. SL: It is, but that idea that these shows, all they are is the next performance. Everybody wants to go. The Oscar-nominated actress will return to a musical role for the first time since 2011's The . When you think about that, its an interesting question whether you do do that. It is a duet sung by Connor's father and Evan, titled "To Break in A Glove." Though it is literally talking about the correct way to break in a baseball glove, it can also be talking about . Were here today on Recode Decode in New York City, and were talking to Stacy Mindich and Steven Levenson, the producer and book writer of Dear Evan Hansen, which is a show I saw. Today in the red chairs are Stacey Mindich and Steven Levenson, the producer and book writer of Dear Evan Hansen. Its a musical about a high school student with social anxiety disorder struggling to connect with people around him, including his crush, Zoe, and her social outcast brother Connor. In the beginning of the ad campaign, those faces were actually stock faces that we bought. Ben Platt plays the title role, reprising the performance that he originated on stage six years earlier. SL: Exactly. 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. Join StageAgent today and unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. Theyre our community, because this show actually started out with a little bit of an ensemble that got cut after our workshop, but Will is the comic relief. Likewise, the character whose death triggers the events of the musical, Connor Murphy, can be viewed both as a redeemable character or a villain. But once she gets on the blog, she blossoms. I think people are hungering to feel a part of a community, and to be sitting in an audience with other people. SM: It does start with a 17-year-old boy alone in his bedroom scrolling through social media. "It takes a little patience, takes a little time. The new single "Found/Tonight," arranged by Alex . Youre also not trying to do lesson learning. Weve also provided a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation. If you haven't seen the show, it's the story of how a teen's viral lie winds up revealing large, prickly truths to the people involved in the falsehood. Seeking 2 Actor Team for Spring Guide written by. 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. SL: Its a very weird net of thing where people are really, really responding to that idea of you will be found, which is actually when Evan is saying it in the musical, its not true. This one took a long time because it was not based on a book or a movie, or anything at all except perhaps a moment that Benj Pasek had in high school, except for the fact that Steven Levenson turned that all around. 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. SL: Totally, and she also represents someone who doesnt believe in privacy. Were all paying for that. 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. On his journey to be found, he discovers the consequences of risking it all for the chance to . You dont know theyre happy. Then a week later, two of them divorced. We have an ad campaign. The school said, Well, we dont want to be punitive. I said, No, we want to be punitive. 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. Found the image online but it's shown in the book Dear Evan Hansen: Through the Window. SL: Theres going to be a moment when those feel like dinosaurs. SL: Sarah Ruhl, the playwright, had a play called Dead Mans Cell Phone, where she had a line where she said, The only two places that are safe from cellphones now are theaters and churches.. Its fascinating. Its not scalable. Monologues are presented on StageAgent for educational purposes only. Ben Platt, playing an anxious teenager . So no hiding. We are all looking and seeing how much fun everything else is thats happening. Dear Evan Hansen is a musical with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Steven Levenson. Will you support Voxs explanatory journalism? You can find more episodes of Recode Decode anywhere you listen to a podcast. Do you want to take a little plug, Steven? So many shows and movies and everything else, a lot of literature about that, finding connection, or you try to make people feel better about the idea that you can be connected in this interconnected world, where I think nobody has felt lonelier than ever before. Laura Baronet. Theres something about this story. SL: Yes, and she actually We always try to be careful thats shes never a villain. And interesting. Explain to me how long a show takes to get through? You can read some of the highlights from the interview at that link, or listen to it in the audio player below. Dear Evan Hansen (2021) centers on Evan Hansen (Ben Platt), a high school student with social anxiety disorder whose letter to himself, one that was not meant to be seen by others, lands into the wrong hands of fellow classmate, Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), who, as a result, commits suicide. You are instructed to turn your phone off, and so it is an hour or two hours where you get into a story in a way that you cant anymore when youre watching television or even in a movie theater, because you can be rude like that in the movie theater. They were holding back the stuff. Dear Evan Hansen, Today's going to be an amazing day and here's why: because because today, all you have to do is just be yourself. Do you imagine a future where that doesnt have to be what we do, like tape it and make it? Essentially, this other boy, Connor Murphy, ends up through a strange series of circumstances taking the letter from Evan, and later offstage, Connor ends up killing himself, and the only thing that his parents find on his person is this letter to Dear Evan Hansen. And intellig but, just be yourself!! Jared is also our truth teller. It feels like people want Is theater retro? On this episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Kara is joined by the producer and book writer of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. Stacey Mindich and Steven Levenson talk about how the show reflects on how social media has changed the nature of community, and why it is still important to get people into a space where they can unplug and see live theater. We were just talking about that idea. It led to offline, which was interesting. A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never . Then, in the darkness, a laptop snaps open. Sometimes, lessons were learned, and youre like, Oh.. We werent going to do a very big thing about it right at this moment, but we did that. 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. I think that we do like to say that the story could have happened in ancient Greece. Kara Swisher: Hi, Im Kara Swisher, executive editor of Recode. 22. If youre not that private, thats why you have that many and stuff like that. SM: Every show is different. Absolutely. Do you feel like you should have Evan online? A little perseverance and a little uphill climb." I believe this quote can relate to many things. I always say about Alana, if you ask her, she has a million friends. It should go everywhere, because I think its real. They put new pictures, theres all these things. They may have started finding us because Ben Platt was about to come out in the second Pitch Perfect movie, or because Pasek and Paul had a following of millennials who were very adept at social media. 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). It feels like the forms are changing but the ideas underneath them are not. Dear Evan Hansen, Today's going to be an amazing day and here's why: because because today, . Start: Today is going to be an amazing d Dear Evan Hansen: It didn't make it into the show, it's the note that Evan was originally gonna write to himself. Sep 23, 2019 - Explore Abby Gallegos's board "Monologues" on Pinterest. The teens are doing revenge porn like Evan. Im going to keep pushing this because you got to see something in the new VR. You know what I mean? Dear, Evan Hansen. But I think whats interesting is the fresh trends of whats happening now, because eight years ago, Facebook was not as big as it is [now]. SM: But its a great symbol of the need for community because she uses knowingly, unknowingly, the experience of Connors death and Evans decision to create the Connor Project, to create a community and a role and a life for herself. We know that because we hear from them. What happened in your play is the online frenzy created an offline community of the families and everything else. Thats why people get frustrated. I do think youre right about books. It was actually really meaningful. This has been a bad year. SL: Yes, and Cynthia is still, I think, struggling and fighting and searching for a way to get through to him, whereas Larry has by the time the show started just written him off, and so has Zoe. Thats all I mean. SL: It feels like there must be a middle ground, because I do feel like ultimately what is going to separate theater from everything else is not the content. SL: Yes, so people are writing fan fiction, and making fan art. What do you think of what he did, because hes a fictional character but hes not? If you would like to give a public performance of this monologue, please obtain authorization from the appropriate licensor. We have a contact list from our website of multiple thousands and thousands and thousands of people that most shows dont have. 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. I thought it was going to be an attack on technology, which I dont mind by the way, but it was really smart. Because today, all you have to do is be yourself. 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. JustANumberToYou. It could have happened 100 years in the future. Book sales are going up, and Kindle and eBooks are really being bought by middle-aged people.