Steven Levenson | |
|---|---|
 Levenson at BookExpo America in 2018 | |
| Born | May 1984 (age 39) |
| Occupation | Playwright, television writer |
| Alma mater | Brown University |
| Notable works | Dear Evan Hansen |
| Notable awards | Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical |
| Spouse | Whitney May |
| Children | 1 |
Steven Levenson (born May 1984) [1] is an American playwright and television writer. He won the 2017 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Dear Evan Hansen .
Levenson was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. He was raised in a Reform Jewish family. [2] [3] He attended St. Andrew's Episcopal School and Brown University. He originally studied theater and English but then turned to playwriting. In discussing his interests in writing, he said: "...it does seem that a lot of my work tends to move in that [family] direction. I do find the dynamics in the family to be fascinating and endlessly variable. Family is, obviously, among the most universal experiences." [4] Although he writes for television as well as the stage, he said: "Theater will always be my first love." [4]
Levenson wrote the book for the musical Dear Evan Hansen which opened on Broadway in December 2016, after premiering at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC in 2015.
His stage playwriting credits include The Language of Trees (2008, Roundabout Theatre Company Black Box Theatre) and Seven Minutes in Heaven (2009). [5] [6]
The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin was produced Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre, opening in June 2013. The play was produced under the Roundabout Theatre's New Play Initiative. [7] [8]
His play If I Forget opened Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre on February 22, 2017 and closed on April 30, 2017. Directed by Daniel Sullivan the cast featured Jeremy Shamos, Kate Walsh and Maria Dizzia. [9]
His play Days of Rage opened at the Off-Broadway Second Stage Theater's Tony Kiser Theatre on October 2, 2018 with direction by Trip Cullman. The play concerns activists in the late 1960s. [10] Days of Rage was earlier presented at the Hartford Stage Brand New Play Festival in a reading in November 2011, directed by Darko Tresnjak. [11] [12]
He was a writer for the Showtime series Masters of Sex , which ran for four seasons, from 2013 to 2016. [13]
He served as showrunner for the FX biographical miniseries Fosse/Verdon about the lives of director-choreographer Bob Fosse and actor-singer Gwen Verdon. The series premiered in 2019.
| Year | Title | Directed by | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Dear Evan Hansen [14] | Stephen Chbosky | based on his and Pasek & Paul's musical, also executive producer |
| tick, tick... BOOM! | Lin Manuel Miranda | released to Netflix & select theaters, also executive producer | |
| TBA | Fiddler on the Roof | Thomas Kail [15] |
Levenson is married to Whitney May, who has worked in art history and design history. They have a daughter, born in 2015. [1]
| Year | Work | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2014 | The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin | Outer Critics Circle Awards | John Gassner Award | Won | |
2016 | Dear Evan Hansen | Obie Awards | Musical Theatre | Won | |
| Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Book of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Won | |||
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Book of a Musical | Won | ||
| If I Forget | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Play | Nominated | ||
| Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Play | Nominated | |||
| Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play | Won | |||
2019 | Fosse/Verdon | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Limited Series | Nominated | |
| Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special | Nominated | ||||
2021 | tick, tick ... BOOM! | HCA Film Awards | Best Adapted Screenplay | Nominated | |
| Writers Guild of America Awards | Best Adapted Screenplay | Nominated |
Michael Frank Park is an American actor, best known for his roles as Jack Snyder on As the World Turns, Larry Murphy in the original Broadway cast of Dear Evan Hansen (2016), and reporter Tom Holloway in the third season of the Netflix series Stranger Things (2019).
Alfred Fox Uhry is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has received an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for dramatic writing for Driving Miss Daisy. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Marc E. Platt is an American producer who has worked in film, theatre, and television. He has received numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards.
Second Stage Theater is a theater company founded in 1979 by Robyn Goodman and Carole Rothman and located in Manhattan, New York City. It produces both new plays and revivals of contemporary American plays by new playwrights and established writers. The company has two off-Broadway theaters, their main stage, the Tony Kiser Theater at 305 West 43rd Street on the corner of Eighth Avenue near the Theater District, and the McGinn/Cazale Theater at 2162 Broadway and 76th Street, on the Upper West Side. In April 2015, the company expanded into Broadway theater productions when it bought the Helen Hayes Theater.
Lonny Price is an American director, actor, and writer, primarily in theatre. He is perhaps best known for his creation of the role of Charley Kringas in the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along and for his New York directing work including Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sondheim! The Birthday Concert.
Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, known together as Pasek and Paul, are an American songwriting duo and composing team for musical theater, films and television. Their works include A Christmas Story, Dogfight, Edges, Dear Evan Hansen, and James and the Giant Peach. Their original songs have been featured on NBC's Smash and in the films La La Land, for which they won both the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song "City of Stars", and The Greatest Showman. Their work on the original musical Dear Evan Hansen has received widespread critical acclaim and earned them the 2017 Tony Award for Best Original Score. In 2022, they won the Tony Award for Best Musical for serving as producers for the Broadway production of Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop.
Lisa Brescia is an American musical theatre actress who has performed as lead and understudy in several Broadway shows. Raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she went on to pursue acting and graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She taught Acting I and IV at Missouri State University and is now set to be the head of the Musical Theatre department at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
Justin Paul is an American theater and television composer and lyricist best known for his works The Greatest Showman, La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen, all of which he co-wrote with his songwriting partner, Benj Pasek.
Thomas Kail is an American theatre director, known for directing the Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musicals In the Heights and Hamilton, garnering the 2016 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the latter. Kail was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2018.
Christopher Denham is an American actor, screenwriter and director. He is perhaps best known for supporting roles in Argo, Being the Ricardos, Shutter Island and his role in the Sundance Film Festival cult phenomenon, Sound of My Voice, as well as the television series Billions, Shining Girls, opposite Elisabeth Moss and Amazon Prime's Utopia, created by Gillian Flynn.
Benjamin Schiff Platt is an American actor, singer, and songwriter. He began his acting career in musical theater as a child and appeared in productions of The Sound of Music (2006) and The Book of Mormon (2012–2015), rising to prominence for originating the title role in Broadway coming-of-age musical Dear Evan Hansen (2015–2017). His performance in the latter earned him multiple accolades, including a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award. At age 23, Platt became the youngest solo recipient of the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for his performance in Dear Evan Hansen. Platt reprised the role of Evan Hansen in the 2021 film adaptation of the musical, produced by his father. He then played Leo Frank in the 2022 New York City Center Gala production of Parade, which transferred to Broadway in 2023.
Dear Evan Hansen is a musical with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Steven Levenson. The musical follows Evan Hansen, a high school senior with social anxiety, "who invents an important role for himself in a tragedy that he did not earn".
Sam Gold is an American theater director and actor. Having studied at Cornell University and Juilliard School he became known for directing both musicals and plays, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He has received Tony Award and nominations for three Drama Desk Awards.
Peter Nigrini is an American projection designer live theater. His best-known designs include Dear Evan Hansen, Fela!, and Here Lies Love. He also works occasionally as a scenic and lighting designer, most notably his longstanding collaboration with Nature Theater of Oklahoma. He is also a lecturer at New York University
Rachel Bay Jones is an American actress and singer. She has played the roles of Catherine in the 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin and Evan Hansen's mother, Heidi Hansen, in Dear Evan Hansen. The latter earned her an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, and the 2017 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
Dear Evan Hansen: Original Broadway Cast Recording is the cast album to the 2015 musical Dear Evan Hansen, with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Steven Levenson. The recording stars Ben Platt, Rachel Bay Jones, Laura Dreyfuss, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Michael Park, Mike Faist, Will Roland and Kristolyn Lloyd. The album was produced by Alex Lacamoire, Pasek and Paul, and featuring musicians include Rob Jost, Adele Stein, Justin Smith, Ben Cohn, Jamie Eblen, Dillon Kondor, Justin Goldner, Christopher Jahnke and Todd Low. The album was released by Atlantic Records on January 27, 2017, and featured at #8 on the Billboard 200, making the highest debut for a cast album after Camelot (1961). It also topped the Internet Albums chart. It further received the Best Musical Theater Album award at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards.
Oslo is a Tony award-winning play by J. T. Rogers, recounting the true-life, previously secret, back-channel negotiations in the development of the pivotal 1990s Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The play premiered Off-Broadway in June 2016 and then transferred to Broadway in April 2017.
Michael David Faist is an American actor. An alumnus of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Faist is the recipient of a Grammy and a Daytime Emmy Award, with nominations for a Tony and a British Academy Film Award.
Rebecca Taichman is an American theatre director. In 2017, she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Indecent.
Mallory Bechtel is an American musical theatre actress based in New York City. She has performed as lead and understudy in several musicals including the Tony Award-winning musical, Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway. She has also appeared in multiple television shows and films. In 2022, she starred as twins Karen and Kelly Beasley on Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
