Don’t Blame It on Their Youth
WHEN IT COMES TO TEENAGERS AND BROADWAY, 2016’s Dear Evan Hansen changed the game. The Tony winning Pasek and Paul musical was certainly not the first Broadway show about—or beloved by—teens. That credit might go to Spring Awakening (2006) or 13 (2008) or Runaways (1978), or much further back to Babes in Arms (1937), considered the first musical with an entire cast of teenage characters. In the wake of Dear Evan Hansen’s success, Broadway quickly saw a sweep of major productions with teenage protagonists: Mean Girls (2018), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2018), The Prom (2018), Choir Boy (2019), Be More Chill (2019), and the latest installation, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (2019). But Dear Evan Hansen catalyzed the birth and rapid expansion of a seemingly new subgenre, the teen musical.
The teen musical is a distinct form, related to but different from Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA), which on Broadway, ). Teen musicals are usually less directly didactic, and typically focus on coming-of-age stories. Instead of TYA, a closer and more accurate analog for the teen musical is young adult (YA) fiction. Drawing on this similar literary subgenre, it might be helpful to think of shows like as Young Adult Theatre.
