Dates: 2016 – present
New York: The Music Box, Broadway (Previews from November 14 2016, opened December 4 2016, closed 18 September 2022) 1,678 regular performances and 21 preview performances
London: The Noel Coward Theatre (previews from 29 October 2019, opened19 November 2019, paused in March 2020 due to Coronavirus pandemic, reopened 26 October 2021, closed 22 October 2022)
Music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
Book by Steven Levenson
Lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul
Directed by Michael Greif
Choreographed by Danny Mefford
Associate Director: Adrienne Campbell-Holt
Scenic Design: David Korins
Costume Design: Emily Rebholz
Lighting Design: Japhy Weideman
Sound Design: Nevin Steinberg
Projection Design: Peter Nigrini
From LSI Online, 14 January 2020
UK – The Tony Award-winning Best Musical Dear Evan Hansen opened in London 19 November at the Noel Coward Theatre with video projection comprising the shows entire stage scenery.
Supplied by Stage Sound Services, three disguise vx 4 and four gx 1 servers powered projections for the show, highlighting the impact of social media on daily life and create an immersive social media environment on stage for the actors.
“The cornerstone of the play is Evan and his interaction with the real world through a social media lens,” says projection designer Peter Nigrini. “To successfully tell our story, social media needed to be a visceral part of the theatrical environment. After the set designer created a physical environment, my job was to bring this virtual world to life on stage and give it the emotional power that so many teenagers clearly feel in their day to day lives.”
Every surface of the playing space can be covered by content. Display surfaces include a front projection system, a series of portals and tracking panels, flat-panel LCD monitors and the stage floor. Eight projectors and 32 monitors are deployed.
Nigrini notes that, “every piece of scenery that moves in the design is automated, and we can track it in real time. In moving the show to London we were also able to pre-visualise the entire production in New York, make decisions about automation and scenery in response to the changed dimensions of the London production. We were able to feed this back to other departments so it could all be pre-programmed. Integration with automation is key in disguise.”
disguise was chosen “to have precise control over where tiny fragments of image are mapped,” says Nigrini. “I’ve always skirted the edge of disguise’s capacity in my shows. It is a perverse inversion of scale you experience when working in the theatre – we are working in a tiny space but with 40 HD video channels and requiring the capacity of the vx 4 to deliver them.”
Cast rotation plays a central role in Dear Evan Hansen. The company has 17 actors in total, with 8 actors on stage at one time. With a changing cast for each performance, each of whom appear in pre-recorded video footage during the show, the disguise real-time workflow helps facilitate cast rotation and the live video effects.
“Throughout the prep and technical rehearsals we worked closely with the show’s video design and production teams to assist with any equipment alterations and could always rely on the disguise servers to perform every step along the way,” says James Paul, senior account manager with Stage Sound Services, which was awarded the rental contract. “Before the video system was finalised we were fortunate enough to be able to upgrade the original specification from disguise 4×4 pro servers to vx 4 servers, which played a big part in bringing the show’s demands to life.”
(Jim Evans)
A filmed adaptation of the musical was released in September 2021, starring original star Ben Platt.
