Interview: Chatting with Jackie Burns of DEAR EVAN HANSEN at The Muny

Actor Jackie Burns returns to the Muny Stage next week in the highly anticipated Muny premiere of Dear Evan Hansen. She last played the Muny two season ago as songwriter Cynthia Weil in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Burns won a St. Louis Theater Circle award for best supporting performer in a musical for that role. 

This will be the third time that Burns takes the stage in St. Louis. In 2016, she starred in the National Tour of If/Then, a role she also performed on Broadway as Idina Menzel’s understudy. Burns said she remembers during that run in St. Louis thinking that the audiences here were uniquely appreciative. 

When asked about returning to The Muny, Burns exclaimed, “The Muny is my favorite place I’ve ever worked. I’d been wanting to work here for a very long time.” She said that getting her offer for Beautiful felt just like getting a Broadway offer. “The work they do here is so great and St. Louis audiences are so attentive and present. This is an arts forward community and it feels very welcoming as an actor to perform here,” she gushed. 

This season Burns will be playing Heidi, Evan’s mother, in Dear Evan Hansen. She talked about Heidi’s struggles to be the best mother she can be for her son. “I love Heidi. At the core she is a woman who is trying her hardest, through trial and error, to give her son what he needs.” She says the song “So Big, So Small” forces Heidi to share her personal lows with her son hoping to give him strength to navigate what he’s facing. 

Burns co-star in Evan Hansen is actor Michael Fabisch who has played the role in the national tour.  She said he has a fantastic collaborative spirit and is willing to do whatever needs to be done in the moment. “I couldn’t ask for a better scene partner.   

In their social media posts The Muny is featuring a video from the rehearsal studio with Fabisch, accompanied by a pianist, singing For Forever. When Burns was asked about her cast mate and the video, she said, “He sings with perfect pitch every day. It is effortless! He is phenomenal! He’s going to be a big star.”  

Burns, and a few other Muny veterans, will be performing with many young people making their Muny debut. When asked about what the veterans might impart to the young people in the cast, Burns humbly deflected, “They are giving us so much more. It was so powerful on our first day when the cast sang You Will Be Found. The pure joy from these young actors’ voices reminded me exactly why I got into this business. As corny as it sounds, this is really special. Being in that room with them re-upped my love for the theater.”  

Burns says people love Dear Evan Hansen and find it relatable because of the basic human need to feel connected. “There is not a single person in this world who hasn’t felt like an outsider at some point. At our core we all want to belong, and this show speaks to that. It’s in the lyric You are not alone.”