Dear Evan Hansen
For anyone who has ever felt unseen in a crowded room, Dear Evan Hansen arrives with a story that lands close to home.
By Edit Sarasota Staff
For anyone who has ever felt unseen in a crowded room, Dear Evan Hansen arrives with a story that lands close to home. The Tony Award–winning musical, a contemporary touchstone about loneliness, belonging, and the perilous stories we tell to feel connected, is coming to the region for its area premiere.
At the center is Evan Hansen, a seventeen-year-old accustomed to life on the margins. After an unexpected tragedy, Evan is pulled into the orbit of a family and a community eager for meaning. What begins as a well-intentioned misunderstanding grows into something more complicated, forcing him to reckon with the difference between being noticed and being known. The musical’s emotional power lies not in easy answers, but in its willingness to examine the longing beneath our mistakes: the wish to matter, to be understood, to find a place among other people.
With a Tony Award–winning book by Steven Levenson, whose credits include Fosse/Verdon, and a contemporary score by EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the writers behind The Greatest Showman and La La Land, Dear Evan Hansen balances intimate confession with songs that have become part of the modern musical-theater canon. Its Broadway run at the Music Box Theatre earned six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, as well as major honors from the Drama League, Drama Desk, Obie, Outer Critics Circle, and Helen Hayes organizations.
For Sarasota-area audiences, the production offers more than a celebrated title. Its questions about adolescence, social media, grief, and the hunger for connection feel particularly resonant in a community where generations frequently overlap—in schools, arts organizations, neighborhood gatherings, and family life. Theater can give public shape to private feelings, and Dear Evan Hansen has become a gathering place for those conversations: about mental health, honesty, forgiveness, and the courage to show up as oneself.
The production will be presented by Florida Cultural Group, Inc., home of the Manatee Performing Arts Center, a regional venue that serves as an important cultural bridge between Bradenton and Sarasota. Audiences can experience the area premiere of Dear Evan Hansen on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, at the Manatee Performing Arts Center, 502 Third Avenue West.