In Conversation with Steven Levenson

Steven Levenson is a celebrated playwright, and a 2017 Tony Award winner for writing the book for Dear Evan Hansen.

On the role of a book writer:

In the case of the musical, as a book writer, your job in a lot of cases is to support the score and to make sure the most important moments emotionally are happening in song. So, it’s a lot of figuring out when to step out of the way, and to make sure that you’ve laid the ground enough — and not too much — so that those characters can make the leap into song.

On creating a new musical:

In a way, there’s a great freedom about [creating an original work]. We are not beholden to any preexisting vision, but with that freedom comes a lot of anxiety — because we can do anything we want. That can be both freeing and terrifying. [As told to The Washington Times]

On collaborating with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul:

I think the role of the book writer can be very different things. In this case, since there was no source material, it was really the three of us coming up with this idea together. We started with this idea of “connection” — people’s desire and thirst and need for connection. My instinct was to create a story about someone who could not connect in a world that is all about connection and interconnectedness. What does it mean to have a protagonist who is somehow unable to connect? So slowly, Evan began to take shape.

It seemed like the best idea was for me to just write the story like it was a play, because we didn’t have anything else to go on. So I started writing the first act. Where we had talked about possibly placing songs, I would leave space in the script. I would either have nothing or I would have a long monologue — a soliloquy, really — with a character diving into his thoughts to suggest what was happening emotionally. That’s how it all started, with this first draft.

From there, Benj and Justin started writing songs, but there was a lot of back and forth and rewriting. It was an endless dialogue — two steps forward and one step back — because you are building this thing together. It’s a little bit chicken and the egg. You have to be constantly making it and remaking it to accommodate one another — always in service to the story.

On writing plays versus musicals:

It’s so different in so many ways. The big obvious difference is that it’s collaborative from the start — and that your vision is not the only vision. It’s about finding a shared vision with your collaborators. You want to be a little bit hidden in the background at times — you want the music to be the star and the music to do the heavy lifting. So it’s a lot of cutting the things you love the most, and allowing the ideas that you have or the dialogue that you’ve written to become a song. It’s actually really amazing, though, because it feels like something that you just had in your head becomes three dimensional in a way that you could never imagine.

On social media as a character in the show:

We knew we wanted to tell a contemporary story that’s set today, and we knew that we had to somehow talk about social media. I compare it to Bye Bye Birdie, when they’re using the telephones in “The Telephone Hour.” It’s like they’re not using the telephones to talk about telephones, they’re using them because that’s how their world functions. And if we tried to tell our story today without cell phones and social media, there would be a real inauthenticity about the show. And at the same time we wanted to be sure we’re using social media as a storytelling device and we were never interested in exploring social media as a theme or as an idea. We always wanted to make sure it was grounded in the story and part of the grammar of the show. [As told to Broadway Direct]

On creating two very different families for Dear Evan Hansen:

Both families really came into focus as the story itself took shape. Larry and Cynthia Murphy, we knew, had to represent everything that Evan’s own splintered family wasn’t, his fantasy of what two stable and emotionally available parents might look like. As with all fantasies, Evan’s rose-colored vision of the Murphys turns out to have a tenuous relationship to the reality underneath, but that discovery will only come later for him.

In contrast to this ostensibly perfect family, Evan’s mother, Heidi Hansen, strives to be what her son needs her to be, but everything she does seems only to push him further away. The most important thing for us, in creating these characters, was to present them honestly and without judgment: three parents striving in their own flawed and imperfect way to do what’s best for their children.

Original Source Material:
DiLella, Frank. “Dear Evan Hansen: A Contemporary Musical for All Ages .” BroadwayDirect.com, November 1, 2016.
Leslie, Emily. “Levenson’s Dear Evan Hansen Opens at Arena Stage .” The Washington Times, July 7, 2015.

Steven Levenson (Book) Author of The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin (Roundabout Theatre Company, Outer Critics Circle Award), Core Values (Ars Nova, Drama Desk nomination), Seven Minutes in Heaven (Colt Coeur), The Language of Trees (Roundabout), and the book for Dear Evan Hansen (Second Stage; Obie, Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical; Arena Stage, Helen Hayes Award). His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Playscripts. A graduate of Brown University and former artist in residence at Ars Nova, he is a founding member of Colt Coeur and an alumnus of MCC’s Playwrights Coalition.

Composing with Pasek & Paul

The Oscar, Tony and Grammy Award-winning pair of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have worked together as a dynamic musical duo since their college days—a partnership that has taken them to Broadway, Hollywood and beyond. You might have also heard their work in film projects such as La La Land and The Greatest Showman. Here, the two talk about how their collaboration began and how they brought their original musical to life.

How did you become a composing team?

BP: We both went to the University of Michigan for musical theater. We went there to be actors. For a lot of people who love the theater, when you’re young, acting is your way in. But halfway through school we realized maybe we’re not cut out to be performers… After many failed attempts to get good roles in our school shows, we saw the writing on the wall and thought, “Why don’t we write our own show, and see what we can make of that?” [As told to Metro Weekly]

JP: We just started doing it for fun. We were freshmen in college when we began tinkering. It was fun to develop songs thinking from characters’ perspectives. We decided to string some of these songs together and make a song cycle our sophomore year. People were receptive. I think before we even knew what was happening we had begun a collaboration. [As told to Metro Weekly]

What role did music play in your childhood?

JP: I grew up in a pretty musical household. Neither of my parents are professional musicians, but they’re very, very musical. My dad and my mom would sit down and play the piano. I grew up playing a lot of music in church, and singing with my parents. I started taking piano lessons when I was 7. So they were always very encouraging and they knew that I had a love for it and a knack for it. [As told to Metro Weekly]

In addition to being a performer, I always wanted to be in the pit orchestra, playing piano or percussion. I always saw myself being involved on the musical side of things in musical theater. I just figured it would be interpreting and teaching and working out other people’s music. I hadn’t really planned on it being my own music. [As told to Metro Weekly]

BP: My mom created a bunch of kids’ albums where she would document whatever we were doing growing up and she would turn those moments into songs. She had a children’s music group in our local area of Philadelphia. So I grew up just witnessing my mom, who’s a psychologist — not a professional musician — turning life moments into song. That’s essentially what we do every day, when we try to create theater. Watching her interpret things that were happening in the world, or in my world as a kid, and setting them to music — I think that really sparked an interest in writing and creating and interpreting life moments into song lyrics. [As told to Metro Weekly]

Facebook and YouTube were instrumental in circulating your early music. Can you elaborate on the role the Internet played in launching your career?

JP: For us, in terms of songwriting, having our stuff out online was a huge way to be able to connect with people, and musical theater fans all over the country and all over the world, in a way that couldn’t have happened 20 years ago. People knew our songs and knew our music before we ever had a show in New York City.

BP: In terms of our careers, I think we were in the right place at the right time, and started writing songs at the right time. We were in college in 2005 and that was a year after Facebook began. And the year that YouTube began. And I think that really changed the way that people had access to new material.

BP: Before that, shows needed to exist in New York — you needed at least an Off-Off-Broadway production to spread the word. What was so revolutionary about Facebook and YouTube was this democratization of who could have access to putting stuff online, and being able to see it right away. So, you could be in Iowa or Singapore and you could see your content immediately without having to go to New York. And as writers, we didn’t have to go through any traditional means of getting it out there [through agents or producers] — we just put it online. [As told to TCG]

Tell us a bit about how the idea for Dear Evan Hansen originated. I understand that it was born out of your own high school experience.

BP: There was a student who was sort of anonymous. He died of a drug overdose, and it was sort of unclear whether it was intentional or not. After he passed away the student body became very, very close to him. Everybody sort of claimed him as their best friend after he died, and began to write their college essays about him, and began to talk about how amazing he was and how important he was in their lives. [As told to Metro Weekly]

When Justin and I met in college, and we began to write musicals, this moment from my high school days continued to be fascinating. We talked about exploring it in a musical. Since then, we’ve brought up a lot of other themes that we wanted to talk about — there’s sort of a need to connect, the need to be part of a community, the need to be a part of something larger than yourself, especially in the digital, isolated age that we now find ourselves in. We began to explore how we could take those themes and turn them into a musical. And that’s when the amazing Steven Levenson came into the picture and helped us to churn our ideas into an actual plot. [As told to Metro Weekly]

JP: We noticed certain things about our culture… some things that were fascinating about the modern response to tragedy and loss. We became very interested in the world’s response to loss. And how people grieve and also communicate in the era of social media.

JP: It made us think about our desire to connect, and our desire to be a part of something larger than ourselves. Despite our great connectedness through Facebook and Twitter and all of these social media platforms, despite being as connected as we’ve ever been as a society …

BP: We’re more isolated than ever. All of us, teenagers and adults alike.

JP: And so we wanted to use that as the backdrop of our story, but we’re telling it through the specific story of a family. This family is looking for that kind of connection, and in losing someone they love, they try to fill that void.

Can you talk a bit about the character of Evan Hansen? He is a risky, unusual protagonist.

JP: It’s definitely an unusual one in that he’s riddled with issues and anxieties, and with lots of self-esteem issues and a lot of other things. But I think that’s what makes him very accessible and identifiable and relatable. Hopefully everyone can go and see the show and see a little bit of Evan in themselves, and feel like they can connect with him, or at least connect with the situations that he finds himself in — he doesn’t know the right thing to say to people, or how to fit into a conversation, or how to be himself and not try to create or embellish a story about himself that is better than what he thinks his real life is.

It’s a different sort of character and maybe not your typical musical theater leading man, but that’s definitely what we were hoping to write — a contemporary and relevant and accessible character. [As told to Metro Weekly]

BP: Traditionally, in Musical Theater 101, you learn to try to write a protagonist who people like and root for on their journey. In Dear Evan Hansen, we have a protagonist who does things that are really morally questionable. It’s our jobs as writers to try to get the audience to identify with him and to support why he does what he does. We wanted to try to a create character who was more complex — and more nuanced — than maybe more traditional musical theater characters. We’ll let critics and audiences be the judge of whether or not we have succeeded or failed. [As told to Metro Weekly]

Benj and Justin talk about being composers in the age of YouTube at TEDx Broadway:

Steven, Benj and Justin discuss Dear Evan Hansen on Theatre Talk (Part 1):

Steven, Benj and Justin discuss Dear Evan Hansen on Theatre Talk (Part 2 – this video begins at 15:00 with the Evan Hansen portion of the program):

Original Source Material:
Rule, Doug. “Perfectly Composed: Pasek and Paul are the future of the American musical .” MetroWeekly.com, August 13, 2015.
Evans, Suzy. “You Tubesicals: The Internet Is Reinventing How Musical Theatre Is Distributed and Licensed — and Even How Shows Are Being Written .” American Theatre, Highbeam.com, July 1, 2014.

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Music and Lyrics) are the Tony, Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe Award-winning songwriting team behind Dear Evan Hansen. Other Broadway: A Christmas Story, The Musical (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle nominations). Off-Broadway: Dear Evan Hansen (Second Stage; Obie, Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle awards); Dogfight (Second Stage; Lucille Lortel Award and Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, London Evening Standard Award nominations). Regional: James and the Giant Peach (Seattle Children’s Theatre) and Edges (Capital Repertory Theater). Film: La La Land (2017 Academy Award and Golden Globe Award), The Greatest Showman (2018 Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe Award), Trolls. Upcoming film projects: Aladdin, Snow White, Foster. Television: “A Christmas Story Live!” (2018 Emmy Award nomination), “Smash,”“The Flash.” The Dear Evan Hansen original Broadway cast recording received the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and The Greatest Showman original motion picture soundtrack is certified Quadruple Platinum in the U.K., Double Platinum in the U.S., and Platinum in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Additional honors: Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre (American Academy of Arts and Letters), ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, Jonathan Larson Award. Both are graduates of the University of Michigan Musical Theatre Program and currently serve on the Board of Directors for the Dramatists Guild Foundation.

Direction from Michael Grief

Can you talk a bit about the process of developing a new musical? What drew you to this project in particular?

What drew me to the piece initially was the opportunity to work with these collaborators, who I thought were exciting, and young, and very interesting theater makers. And then, when I first heard about what the piece was, I was very drawn to the complicated and emotional lives of the characters. I really thought that Benj, Justin and Steven were creating a piece where the characters… had very good reasons to express themselves through song and music. In such a heightened emotional arena it… the stakes are so high that it feels like the characters are singing for their lives. [As told to Playbill.com]

How would you describe the story of Evan Hansen?

It’s a really truthful, smart, and sophisticated story about how 17-year-olds live in the world today … and about how parents relate to their children and how kids relate to their parents…. [It’s] about a lonely kid, and how a family in crisis, a grieving family, in many ways adopts this lonely kid. And this kid finds a lot of love and a lot of support from this family, but also always knows that in many ways he doesn’t deserve their love and support. At the same time the family is dealing with an extraordinary loss. And … they really make this kid a part of their family because they need this kid to be a part of their family. It fulfills an enormous need that they’re suffering from — to have a surrogate son. [As told to Playbill.com]

What message would you like for people to take away from Dear Evan Hansen?

That everybody deserves a chance. And everybody deserves a second chance.

Original Source Material:
Rothstein, Mervyn. “Next to Normal’s Michael Greif Stirs Up More Family Drama with Dear Evan Hansen .” Playbill.com, July 6, 2015.

Michael Grief (Director) received his fourth Tony nomination and a Helen Hayes Award for his work on Dear Evan Hansen. Other Broadway credits: Rent, Grey Gardens, Next to Normal, Never Gonna Dance, If/ Then, War Paint. Recent work includes Our Lady of Kibeho and Angels in America (NY’s Signature Theatre); The Low Road, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…. Regional work includes premieres and revivals at Williamstown Theatre Festival (ten seasons), La Jolla Playhouse (AD, five seasons), Arena Stage, Center Stage, Mark Taper Forum, Dallas Theater Center, Trinity Repertory Company. Television: “RENT: Live.” Greif holds a BS from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.

Making Music with Alex Lacamore