What to Expect When Dear Evan Hansen Hits Broadway

Before Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s new musical Dear Evan Hansen was a certified Off-Broadway hit, selling out its Second Stage run and then extending to sold-out crowds, it was the idea the duo was afraid of. “Our producer, Stacey Mindich, approached us and asked us what we wanted to do and what was the thing in our heads that we didn’t have the courage to write without somebody kind of helping us and coaxing us and pushing us forward,” said Pasek. “I don’t think we would have been brave enough to write an original show had she not [pushed us].”

It seems a rarity that any musical emerge free from source material—no previous version as a play or film or even a book. The story (with a book by collaborator Steven Levenson) follows Evan Hansen, a high school senior paralyzed by anxiety whose world opens up after his classmate dies and the school flails to grasp on to something and someone... READ MORE

Photograph by Matthew Murphy