Dear Evan Hansen (TCG Edition)

Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781559365604
• eBook ISBN: 9781559368803
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Winner of the 2017 Tony Award for Best Musical

“Dear Evan Hansen lodges in your head long after you’ve seen it or heard it or read it. It feels like a pure expression from young writers at a crossroad of coming to terms with who they are and what they want to say about the world. Its honesty and truths haunt and ultimately open us up to ask the same question, no matter what our age or crossroad: What are the lies we tell ourselves?” –James Lapine (from the Foreword)

A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never meant to be told, a life he never dreamed could be his. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he’s always wanted: a chance to belong. Deeply personal and profoundly universal, Dear Evan Hansen is a groundbreaking American musical about truth, fiction, and the price we’re willing to pay for the possibility to connect.

*This publication includes the book and lyrics to the musical, as well as a foreword by James Lapine. Please note that it does not include the musical score.*

Steven Levenson is the book writer for Dear Evan Hansen. His plays include If I Forget, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, Core Values, The Language of Trees, and Seven Minutes in Heaven. A graduate of Brown University, he served for three seasons as a writer and producer on Showtime’s Master of Sex.

Benj Pasek & Justin Paul are the song-writing team behind Dear Evan Hansen. Previous musicals include A Christmas Story: The Musical, Dogfight, James and the Giant Peach, and Edges. Their film projects include La La Land (for which they won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “City of Stars,” with composer Justin Hurwitz), Trolls, Snow White, and The Greatest Showman. Their television credits include The Flash, Smash, and Johnny and the Sprites. Both are graduates of the University of Michigan Musical Theatre Program and members of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.

ACT ONE

ONE

A quiet buzzing begins to sound just at the edge of our awareness, an indistinct murmuring of voices, as the house lights slowly fade.

The murmuring builds, growing louder and louder, voices piling on top of one another.

Millions of fragments of emails, status updates, cat videos, dessert recipes, revenge porn—the music of the spheres.

Of a sort.

Suddenly, sharply, nothing.

Silence.

Then, in the darkness, a laptop snaps open.

The gauzy white glow of the screen illuminates the face of Evan Hansen, sitting at a desk with a hard cast on his left arm, alone.

He begins to type.

EVAN: Dear Evan Hansen:

Today is going to be an amazing day, and here’s why. Because today, all you have to do is just be yourself.

(Beat.)

But also confident. That’s important. And interesting. Easy to talk to. Approachable. But mostly be yourself. That’s the big, that’s number one. Be yourself. Be true to yourself.

(Beat.)

Also, though, don’t worry about whether your hands are going to get sweaty for no reason and you can’t make it stop no matter what you do, because they’re not going to get sweaty, so I don’t even know why you’re bringing it up, because it’s not going to happen, because you’re just, all you have to do is be yourself.

(Beat.)

I’m not even going to worry about it, though, because seriously it’s not like, it’s not going to be like that time you had the perfect chance to introduce yourself to Zoe Murphy at the jazz band concert last year, when you waited afterward to talk to her and tell her how good she was, and you were going to pretend to be super casual like you didn’t even know her name, like she would introduce herself and you’d be like, “Wait, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Chloe, you said your name was Chloe?” And she’d be, like, “No, it’s Zoe, I said, Zoe,” and you’d be, like, “Oh, see, I thought you said Chloe because I don’t even, I’m very busy with other stuff right now is the thing.” But then you didn’t even end up saying anything to her anyway, because you were scared your hands were sweaty which they weren’t that sweaty until you started worrying that they were sweaty, which made them sweaty, so you put them under the hand dryer in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Dear Evan Hansen
• Production History
• Characters/Set/Note
• Songs
• Act One
• Act Two
• About the Authors