Dear Evan Hansen is a coming-of-age stage musical with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Steven Levenson. The musical follows Evan Hansen, a high school senior with social anxiety, "who invents an important role for himself in a tragedy that he did not earn".
Poster of the World Premiere production at Arena Stage, Washington, D.C. in 2015
Branding as seen on the Music Box Theatre
Branding as seen on the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto
Ben Platt and Rachel Bay Jones received praise for originating the roles of Evan Hansen and Heidi Hansen, and won the Tony Awards for Best Actor in a Musical and Best Featured Actress in a Musical respectively.
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known together as Pasek and Paul, are an American songwriting duo and composing team for musical theater, films and television. Their works include A Christmas Story, Dogfight, Edges, Dear Evan Hansen, and James and the Giant Peach. Their original songs have been featured on NBC's Smash and in the films La La Land, for which they won both the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "City of Stars", and The Greatest Showman. Their work on the original musical Dear Evan Hansen has received widespread critical acclaim and earned them the 2017 Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Original Score. In 2022, they won the Tony Award for Best Musical for serving as producers for the Broadway production of Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop.
Benj Pasek (left) and Justin Paul, 2009
