About This Project

TONY AWARD-WINNING MUSICAL DEAR EVAN HANSEN AND DIGITAL FASHION HOUSE BLUEBERRY ANNOUNCE FIRST-EVER BROADWAY METAVERSE FASHION DROP IN SUPPORT OF MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH

Overview

In honor of May’s Mental Health Awareness month, Dear Evan Hansen, the Tony, Grammy, Olivier-Award winning Broadway musical, is partnering with Blueberry Entertainment, the industry’s leading digital fashion brand, to launch an innovative metaverse fundraising event. Beginning Friday, May 13, 2022, a digital version of the show’s iconic blue striped polo will be available for purchase on Roblox, with 100% of the proceeds to benefit the Child Mind Institute, the not-for-profit dedicated to transforming the lives of children struggling with mental health disorders and learning disorders.

In parallel, as part of a partnership with two members of the genre-defining Bored Ape Yacht Club community, two Bored Apes will be dressed in the same blue-striped polo (#5430 and #5838). This partnership will draw attention to Mental Health Awareness Month and also include a donation to the Child Mind Institute. This marks the first time ever that a Broadway show is releasing digital fashion items to multiple metaverse communities.

Background – Dear Evan Hansen & Child Mind Institute

Very few shows have a resident psychiatrist on the team, but Dear Evan Hansen is proud to be able to say that the show actually has several. The relationship between this original, Tony Award-winning musical and The Child Mind Institute dates back more than a decade, to a time when the show’s script was just being written. In an effort to ensure the show handled the nuanced topic of mental health as sensitively and accurately as possible, Dear Evan Hansen lead producer Stacey Mindich invited CMI Founder and President Dr. Harold Koplewicz to one of the show’s earliest readings for his input on the characters and script, after which he worked with Dear Evan Hansen’s Tony Award-winning book writer, Steven Levenson, to finetune the way Evan portrayed his struggle with mental health. But the partnership extended well beyond the page after the first performance of Dear Evan Hansen, as it became clear just how many people related to Evan’s journey and Stacey included Child Mind Institute’s website and contact information on the very first Dear Evan Hansen program, where its remained ever since. Over the many years of the show’s long run, Dear Evan Hansen and Child Mind Institute have collaborated in many meaningful ways that have helped destigmatize the conversations surrounding mental health and raise money for the Child Mind Institute.

About Child Mind Institute

The Child Mind Institute is dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders by giving them the help they need. We’ve become the leading independent nonprofit in children’s mental health by providing gold-standard evidence-based care, delivering educational resources to millions of families each year, training educators in underserved communities, and developing tomorrow’s breakthrough treatments. Learn more at childmind.org.

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