Ultimately, there’s no denying the amount of raw talent, musical prowess, and emotional versatility needed to pull off a powerhouse role like Evan Hansen (Pasek and Paul’s Dear Evan Hansen). Especially after the incomparable Ben Platt set such an annoyingly high bar for any predecessors.
That being said, I’m not going to spend my time with you fan-girling about Ben’s vocal range. (Though I feel urges.)
I’m here to make it publicly known that Evan’s personality is the perfect vessel for having a stutter.
You’re probably thinking about how Evan already stutters in the show, right?
Well, let me preface by saying you’re not alone in that thought.
Recently I’ve seen people point out stuttering as one of Evan’s most notable characteristics. Like a freight train moving slower than usual, it struck me that many theatre-goers might even consider Evan a full-fledged stutterer.
And while they’re not severely off the mark, I would like to gauge how familiar they are with stuttering (as it exists outside of the story).
It’s true that in productions Evan displays a lot of discord in his speech. The character suffers from crippling anxiety, and his verbal mannerisms strongly reflect this. His style of speaking is full of frenetic word-vomiting, constant changes in pace, and fluctuations in volume. Plus, he’s always doing something distracting with his hands or face, which I see as an homage to various avoidance behaviors.
All occasional qualities of real-life stutterers.
However, we should be examining what sets a stutter apart from other types of vocal traits.
And then asking…
Is Dear Evan Hansen really nailing their execution of stuttering like some think it is?
And furthermore, does Evan truly stutter at all?
Let’s get situated at the highest heights of our favorite trees ( taking it one branch and then to another… undeniably weak reference) and explore the matter further…
Does He Stutter?
Straight up, stutters are more than strange ways of spitting out words. Sure, I’ll agree they sometimes make us sound like broken car engines, but keep with me. They’re so much more than that shoddy simile suggests!
A stutter is an ass-kicking speech disorder, which, throughout our lives, we may come to think of as a disability. One that loves to curb-stomp speech patterns, mainly through repeated blocks, lengthy held out sounds, and abrupt absences of noise that can happen at any given time.
Yet Evan, in all of his tense, adolescent glory, rarely displays any of these commonly known attributes of stutterers. We already mentioned that he talks rapidly, sometimes inarticulately, sometimes in a very pronounced ” look at ME I’m scream talking!” voice, but the character still largely omits any of the above-mentioned disfluencies from his language. The only steadily known stutter I noticed from Evan was his flinging of repeated words, which pops up sporadically in select scenes.
That’s why, at least in my opinion, he’s not really being portrayed as a true stutterer.
From my vantage point, I see Evan as more of a generalized “nervous speaker”.
Not the rightful owner of a speech-impediment.
In fact, the show gives us little evidence to decipher anything about Evan beyond social anxiety. It classifies him as a whizzing cloud of various nervous oddities whose problems go undefined. And without a title or diagnosis, we’re left making a ton of uneducated assumptions. Now, this might’ve all been part of an effort to make the character universally relatable, but it also has the adverse effect of making his characterization seem unfocused.
Despite this ambiguity, I’m hopeful that if Evan was intended to be a stutterer, it would be honored in a way that goes beyond the rambling jargon he spews so often.
After all, you can’t just throw out a few skittish lines and call it a stutter. Not when a real one is just as versatile as the actor playing Evan needs to be.
You feel?
“Stuttering” in The Show
What some see as Evan’s stutter, I see as a verbal tool being wielded by his creators. Unshelved for bits of levity, or stretches of weighty duress, in an attempt to forge easy to recognize products of his anxiety.
Let’s look back on the short scene in the middle of Waving Through A Window. The one where Evan painfully raves about jazz band to Zoe Murphy. Instead of me being able to pick out distinguishable stutters, the exchange remains exactly as it appears on the surface. A super uncomfortable boy jawing pitifully to his crush.
Effective? Definitely. Hilarious sounding heaps of Ben Platt-ian word-bile? I’ll give you that.
An accurate representation of what a stutter is? Eh… that’s just not jiving with me, no matter what fan-fiction writing aficionados of the show say. The moment is too overblown to contain any naturalistic speech blocks.
Let’s pause and pretend that some of Evan’s lines are designed to resemble stuttering. To the best of my knowledge, it still doesn’t excuse how and when the show opts to present it…
Most of these so-called “stutters” show up when he’s feeling particularly mentally pressed, or when the audience needs to fill their giggle quota. Yet, on the flip side, they go into hiding when the story enters its periods of (short-lived) stability.
Anybody who stutters knows that you can’t just pick and choose when the stutter reveals itself. It can be reduced but never cured. And for as much of a nuisance as it may be in our most stressful situations, it’s just as much a part of the common occurrences we face every day.
Take it from me, a stutter can be somewhat alleviated, but it will always remain a lingering accomplice in most of what we do.
I see little merit in treating stutters, even a narrow idea of them, as magnets for laughs or tears. Especially when having one goes way beyond those extremes.
Everything A Stutter Needs to Flourish!
It’s not like the source material doesn’t lay out a few breadcrumbs for those of us who stutter.
On a larger scale, the show is packed with lessons in self-acceptance, self-confidence, self-awareness, as well as…what I’m sure are more general, self-based themes. Naturally, an individual with a stutter would be able to find shared commonalities in one or more of these facets.
One resonant line from the show’s libretto comes during money number Words Fail, when an emotionally wrought Evan finally musters the resolve to ask himself “Will I just keep on running away from what’s true?”
Ten words that hit scarily close to how I feel at my lowest of low points. As a stutterer, there are times when I exhaust all my energy to simply “pass” as someone I’m clearly not. Instead of taking the time I need to acknowledge whatever detrimental thoughts are circling around me. For me, this might be a life-long hurdle that I need to keep soaring over. (Or, crawling under, maybe. Whatever works).
The same goes for Evan, whose inner conflict largely stems from an aversion to interpersonal encounters. He attends therapy to work on this, but we still see recurring denial in how he deals with his setbacks. Why not progress this further, and give Evan one more thing to run away from? What about in the form of a debilitating stutter? And what if that stutter acted as just a much a threat, as it did a side-effect of his nerves?
The show goes very briefly down the stuttering route before the act one closer You Will Be Found, when Evan gives a public (albeit, liar liar pants on fire bullshit) address to the entire high school class.
To which I say…Yes! Go on Dear Evan Hansen! Come on with your bad self! What better scene to showcase a sincere stutter than through a depiction of every teenager’s most searing nightmare?!
The moment delivers one choked, breathy struggle, which gravitates slowly into soft, vulnerable vocal lines. At points, Evan is basically fenced in by an inability to continue talking. In my opinion, it’s the most grounded, dialed in moment of the entire show. And it’s heading somewhere towards a realistic take on the public speaking fears stutterers face.
But still, in the grand scheme of things, this is one scene of many. Not to mention another example of the show using stutter-like symptoms to induce stronger reactions from viewers. Rather than incorporating one into the character full-time.
Integrating a wider array of stutters into the entire show would allow a stronger sense of authenticity throughout.
Why Is This So Important You Psychopath?!
What value is there in making Evan a bonafide stutterer, you ask?
Well, besides giving the stuttering community some much-needed representation, it would simultaneously pose a rewarding challenge for serious performers. A chance to add more detailed language patterns into their portrayal, and, in turn, stimulate a new way of thinking as the character. Deterring them from pre-established, comfortable choices, and giving them some other avenues to explore.
Besides the exciting option of having the role be played be somebody who actually stutters, I envision various “fluent” Evans working alongside speech-pathologists or even fellow peers who stutter. These consultations would help the actor integrate various types of disfluencies into their performance. Ones that exemplify the vastness of stuttering. And allow the stutter to breathe a little more freely. (Something I neeeeeever thought I would say…)
Don’t be fooled, these new verbal vulnerabilities could still fluctuate and evolve as Evan does. At the very end of the show, when Evan looks ahead optimistically to his mental-progress yet to come, his stutter might creep in a little less often. As compared to earlier on in the show, where perhaps there are moments Evan’s stutters are so disastrous and so constant, they cause him actual physical discomfort.
A fun way to think of this is by personifying both Evan’s speech and his stutter. By that, I mean creating distinct characters for each of them.
I’m inclined to use the names Norm L. Speech and Dr. Stutter. (Conventional, right?)
So, while Evan’s spinning his web of inappropriate lies, the ever handsome Norm L Speech could be in the midst of a fluency-seeking journey of his own. While Dr. Stutter, who I’m imagining as a dastardly, mustache-twirling villain, could provide nagging push-back to the efforts of his gallant counterpart.
Keep in mind, in order to tune into this gripping clash of protagonist and antagonist, one would have to listen carefully to that skinny, crazed Hansen kid. Because it is within him that this saga evolves.
On an unrelated note, I think I just conceptualized my first children’s book…
On Hold For Now
Dear Evan Hansen would benefit from the inclusion of a consistent, accurate, and altogether complex stutter for it’s title character.
And yes, maybe this is as good as it gets for the time being. And yeeeeeessss, if I were to turn off my analytical side, I might even call it a noteworthy start. However, my worry is that this ideal, culturally relevant medium to highlight stuttering will progress no further.
But a stutterer can dream, right? (It’s true, we can!)
In the mean time, and because I know they exist, I’ll just leave stuttering Evan skeptics with this…
What’s the big deal with having to wait an extra few seconds for Evan to say what he needs to say?
He’ll get it out. You’ll still be there. It’ll be an earned moment for a character who would struggle to communicate regardless.
And most importantly, you might leave the performance with a better understanding of us non-fictional, striped polo-less stutterers out there.