Broadway Shockers 2018: High School Junior Cast as Next Evan Hansen

As 2018 draws to a close, TheaterMania looks back on some of the most jaw-dropping stories of the year.

Imagine auditioning for a Broadway show for the first time. Then imagine landing the lead role. Then, if you can make one more mental leap, imagine you're 16 years old.

That's what happened to Andrew Barth Feldman when he tried out for Dear Evan Hansen in July. Feldman, now a junior at Lawrence Woodmere Academy on Long Island, will take over the Tony Award-winning musical's title role on January 30, 2019, giving the show about a high schooler a new layer of authenticity.

As young as Feldman is, his casting may have come as less of a shock to those who follow the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (widely known as the Jimmy Awards), where Feldman won the Best Performance by an Actor prize in the 2018 competition. It was there that he caught the eye of Dear Evan Hansen's lead producer, who helped arrange his audition. You can see why they found he was the right young man for the job in this clip from the 2018 Jimmy Awards below: