are students in our schools, young people in our families, and perhaps some of the people sitting in this audience right now.
The more I reflected on those ideas, the more I realized this story isn’ t only about teenagers. It’ s about all of us. We’ ve become quick to judge and slow to understand. Social media rewards certainty over curiosity and outrage over empathy and true understanding. Complex human beings become headlines. Nuance disappears. And it has become remarkably easy to reduce people to the worst thing they’ ve ever done.
BEING UNDERSTOOD
Which brings me back to Evan Hansen.
Evan is swept up in a lie, and people are deeply hurt because of it. But, the show never asks us to ignore those consequences, nor does it suggest that Evan escapes them. As theater makers, our job isn’ t to decide whether a character is good or bad. Our job is to keep asking one question: Why?
Why does this lonely sixteen-yearold make a decision that spirals so completely out of control? What fear, longing, or wound makes each next step feel possible? What instinct, however misguided, convinces him that he’ s helping rather than hurting?
The more time we spent with the script, the less I saw a young person trying to deceive people and the more I saw someone desperately trying to ease other people’ s pain while quietly carrying so much of his own. Every choice he makes grows out of his longing to belong, to matter, and to believe that his life has value. None of that excuses what he does. But it fundamentally changed the way I understood him.
It also reminded me that understanding isn’ t the same thing as absolution. We can hold people accountable for the harm they cause while still trying to understand the humanity that led them there. That
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