Ben Platt, the 23-year-old star of the gripping, psychological Dear Evan Hansen, heralds the arrival of a new generation of Broadway talent. He’s been ready for it almost since the day he was born.
Most of us struggle for years trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives, but for Ben Platt that was never a question. “From day one,” the baby-faced actor says, “musical theater was my bread and butter.” When he was sixteen, Platt, who had made his stage debut ten years earlier as the Prince in an all-kids Cinderella, auditioned for the director Michael Greif to star in the touring company of the musical Next to Normal but ended up withdrawing to finish high school. A year later, he tried out for the Off-Broadway musical adaptation of Dogfight, for which he was deemed too young—but not before catching the eye of the show’s young songwriters, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Pasek promised that he would be in touch about another project down the line. “I thought, That’s very kind,” says Platt, “but things like that never really come to fruition.” Read more…
http://www.vogue.com/13498214/dear-even-hansen-musical-broadway-ben-platt/