Final Project Proposition - Dear Evan Hansen

I am proposing to perform the opening and closing monologues from Dear Evan Hansen. They’re from a show that I feel very strongly about and I had already connected with the two monologues even before starting this project. One thing that I’ve been told I struggle with is speaking clearly. Evan’s letter at the beginning of the show is meant to be spoken very quickly, so I will have to push myself to speak quickly but also clearly enough that I can be understood. Evan changes a lot from the beginning of the show to the end. In his second letter at the end of the show he is far more confident, and his anxiety has ebbed since his first rambling letter. He’s definitely much wiser that he was, having gone through everything he did - which included some very difficult stuff to deal with. My biggest challenge will be between the two monologues - I will have to find a way to show the passage of time and the change he undergoes, something which in the real show is accomplished in about an hour and a half but I will have to show in only a minute or two.   

There are several ways this could be accomplished. First, I could utilize music from the show. There’s one part, at the end of “Disappear” and the beginning of “You Will Be Found”, that really shows a change in him in a short amount of time. He receives a tie from Cynthia Murphy, and the time from when he puts it on and begins his speech to the school is the part I would use. He goes up, gets nervous, and starts to have an anxiety attack, but he slowly stands back up and continues his speech, only this time much more confident. The speech would be too out of context but the piano at the end of disappear would be a good backtrack to the transition. Another idea for the transition is that I could use the overlapping voices technique from “You Will Be Found” but record my own version to fit the transition. Finally, I could video the recording and record different scenes from the show that demonstrate his change, and then edit them all in iMovie. I could also not do the last monologue and instead get a scene partner to the scene right after the first monologue between Evan and Heidi.

This monologue will push me to perform something longer than the other monologues this semester. It’s a lot more to memorize than what I’ve done so far but I still think I will be able to handle it. The whole project will encompass both the memorization part and the creative problem solving part of the class. I will have to memorize the monologues but figure out my own transition between the two.