Going from Woodmere to the Broadway stage

“Dear Evan Hansen” won the Tony Award for best musical in 2017, the play follows Evan Hansen, a socially awkward teenager who pretends that he was a deceased classmate’s friend to be closer to their family. The role has been played by several talented actors, all of whom were in their 20s, until Jan. 30, when Lawrence Woodmere Academy junior Andrew Feldman took the lead part.

Feldman, 16, is the first teenager to play the lead role. “It’s the most incredible thing,” he said. “It’s like my dreams are coming true. I hadn’t expected anything like this to happen for years and years. I’m so lucky and so excited.”

He said he was bitten by the acting bug when he first saw “Beauty and the Beast” on Broadway when he was six or seven. When he was eight he had his first role as Mr. Bundles in a production of “Annie.”

Naturally drawn to the drama department, Feldman worked with Debra Orlep, the middle school drama director, and Tasha Partee, the high school drama director. “Andrew stood out from the very beginning,” Orlep said. “He already had some theatrical experience when he came to me. Most kids that age have never done a show before, and teaching the basics can be a challenge, but you try to get them to understand their characters as people, and to put themselves aside and be those people.”

Feldman saw “Dear Evan Hansen” shortly after it opened, then two more times. After winning Best Performance by an Actor for playing Frank Abagnale Jr. in LWA’s production of “Catch Me If You Can” at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (The Jimmy Awards), last June, he auditioned for Evan Hansen in July. He got the part two days later.

To accommodate his busy rehearsal schedule, LWA assembled a team of teachers to serve as tutors. Laura Maffei, his Advanced Placement literature teacher, has helped Feldman keep up with school work. She said that he regularly took part with the class, and is impressed with his ability to analyze characters. “I’ve missed his presence in class,” Maffei said. “I always knew he was very talented just from seeing around the school … in class, he was always an asset to the discussion.”

Susan Lettieri is the director of the school’s global scholar certificate program that involves mentoring younger students, designing programs for the school, media literacy and more. Andrew’s class has focused on creating a school paper, “The Prism.” “He’s very passionate about whatever he immerses himself in,” she said. “Anything he’s in, he’s in 100 percent, that’s just Andrew.”

Feldman said everyone at LWA has been incredibly supportive. He described the school as “a haunted house of people congratulating me, people were just popping out from every corner.” He also credited the school and the drama department, particularly during the performance of “Catch Me If You Can.” “The theater program is amazing,” he said. “They’re dedicated to making it as great as it can be … They gave me the room to do what I needed to do to find Frank Jr.” Feldman added that before being cast in “Dear Evan Hansen” the Frank Jr. role was the most difficult stage part he played.

Partee told a story of watching Feldman rehearse. “We were getting close to time of performance,” she recalled. “I was sitting back in light booth watching Andrew perform a song, and what I wrote down in my notes is ‘Andrew is magical.’ That’s just what I was seeing, what I was feeling in this moment. It was a snapshot of that hard to describe quality that takes a person to where he is now.”