Dear Evan Hansen
CLIENT
Situation Interactive
TECHNOLOGIES
WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery
YEAR
2018
EXTERNAL URL
One of the most design-intensive Broadway builds I worked on — translating Dear Evan Hansen’s iconic visual identity (custom Pantone blue, handwritten typography, arm cast motif) into a precision-built WordPress theme. Custom ticketing calendar, tour integration spanning 100+ cities, and a cast management system built for the show that defined a generation of Broadway.
I led development on this project at Situation Interactive.
Background
Broadway’s cultural juggernaut was about to go global, and the website had to lead the charge.
By the time I started building the Dear Evan Hansen site in 2018, the show had already swept six Tony Awards — including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, and Best Leading Actor for Ben Platt — recouped its $9.5 million investment in just eight and a half months, and held the record for highest gross ever at a Broadway venue seating under 1,000. The “Fansen” community rivaled anything in pop music for intensity. A national tour across 100+ cities was imminent, international productions were spinning up in Toronto and London, and Universal had optioned the film rights. The site I was building would be the primary digital hub for all of it — not just a Broadway marketing page, but the central platform for a franchise expanding across continents and media.
Situation Interactive handled the digital marketing. This was among my earliest Broadway builds, and the scale of the production set the bar for everything that followed.
Implementation
A design-intensive build that translated one of Broadway’s most distinctive visual identities into a digital system.
This was one of the most complex design implementations I worked on. The show’s visual identity — the signature “Dear Evan Hansen Blue” (a custom Pantone color created exclusively for the production), handwritten typography evoking Evan’s letters, and the iconic arm cast motif — demanded a frontend that translated theatrical branding into a precision-built digital system. Every typographic choice, color value, and layout decision referenced the production’s brand guidelines. The design wasn’t decorative — it was structural, carrying the show’s emotional language across every page and content type.
The site was built on WordPress with a custom theme architecture designed for a production operating at multiple scales simultaneously. A ticketing calendar gave visitors a date-driven interface to browse Broadway performances and purchase directly. The tour integration system managed cities, venues, dates, and regional ticket links across 100+ stops on the national tour — all maintained by the marketing team through the CMS. A dedicated cast and creative section handled individual bios, headshots, and role assignments for both the Broadway and touring companies, with structured field groups supporting frequent cast rotations as new actors cycled through the lead role. Media galleries, review carousels, and partnership callouts rounded out a content layer that grew continuously throughout the run.
The site has since had a refresh, but the original build established the content architecture and ticketing patterns that carried the production through its peak years.
Results
Six Tonys, a Grammy, $270 million at the box office, and a platform that scaled from Broadway to the world.
The site served as the production’s primary digital hub during the peak of its commercial run — a period that saw the show gross approximately $270 million across 1,678 Broadway performances at the Music Box Theatre. The ticketing calendar and tour system supported every phase of the show’s expansion: the national tour launch in Denver in September 2018, international openings in Toronto and London, cast rotations through multiple lead actors, a Grammy-winning cast album, and the announcement of the Universal Pictures film adaptation.
The content architecture handled a production lifecycle that most Broadway shows never reach: from Tony sweep to national tour to West End transfer to film deal to licensing through Music Theatre International. Each expansion layered onto the existing structure rather than requiring a rebuild. The ticketing calendar, tour management system, and cast content patterns I built here became the foundation for subsequent productions — The Band’s Visit, Pretty Woman, and The Prom all drew directly on architecture I first developed for Dear Evan Hansen.
This was the project that established my playbook for Broadway builds — six years, four continents, and a feature film later, the architecture I designed for that 984-seat theatre was still holding.
