Reported by Ryan Killian:

SANFORD, FL —

For actress Angela Tims, stepping into the role of Heidi Hansen in Dear Evan Hansen is about more than learning lines, music and blocking. It means bringing pieces of her own life onto the stage. As a single mother raising a neurodivergent son, Tims immediately recognized herself in Heidi — the hardworking mother trying to hold everything together while raising a son struggling with anxiety and the challenges of growing up.

If you Look deeper, however, something else emerges.

Tims describes herself and her 10-year-old son as a “dynamic duo.” Between school, rehearsals and the countless responsibilities of being a working parent, she understands Heidi’s sense of constantly being pulled in different directions. She also understands something less visible: the loneliness that can sometimes accompany motherhood. “There are a lot of us that can feel very invisible and invalidated and alone in motherhood,” she said. It is that lived experience that Tims hopes audiences will recognize when Dear Evan Hansen comes to the Ritz Theater stage.

The Tony Award-winning musical follows Evan Hansen, a socially anxious high school student whose attempt to belong becomes intertwined with a grieving family after the death of a classmate. Its story explores anxiety, depression, suicide, grief, isolation, betrayal and the enormous pressure young people can experience while trying to find their place in the world. Those themes are intensely personal for Tims.

A longtime advocate for mental health awareness, she spoke openly about experiencing anxiety from a young age and later struggling with postpartum depression after becoming a mother. When her son was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as a young child, advocacy became an even larger part of her life. Those experiences have shaped the way she approaches Heidi — and the message she hopes the production carries beyond the theater. “There needs to be more sunshine on mental health,” Tims said. “There needs to be more conversation about it.” To Tims, that means creating a world in which someone can acknowledge that they are struggling without fear or judgment — a message at the very heart of Dear Evan Hansen. “I may look okay, but I’m not okay, and I need you to be there for me,” she said, describing the kind of honesty she hopes conversations about mental health can encourage.

Tims believes one of the most powerful aspects of Dear Evan Hansen is that its characters cannot easily be divided into heroes and villains. Evan makes decisions with serious consequences, but Tims encourages audiences to look beyond those decisions and consider the loneliness, insecurity and longing for connection that motivate the people in the story. “If you look at the show at just surface level, you’re going to come away and think that Evan is this horrible person,” she said.

Heidi feels the isolation of being the only parent in her household. Evan feels unseen. The Murphy family is grieving while its individual members struggle to connect with one another. Nearly everyone is carrying something the others cannot completely see. “Everyone is feeling alone,” Tims said, “but we’re all feeling alone simultaneously and together.” Alongside grief and isolation, the story also offers messages of community, reconciliation and forgiveness — including the recognition that a person should not necessarily be defined forever by one bad decision.

This production also marks Tims’ first appearance at the Ritz Theater, although she is no stranger to Central Florida stages. A Titusville resident, she has performed primarily throughout Brevard County, including work with Titusville Playhouse and the Henegar Center, as well as Theatre West End and Central Florida Vocal Arts. Asked what she expects to carry with her when the final performance is over, Tims became emotional before opening night had even arrived. She described a company willing to share insecurities, find common ground and make themselves vulnerable for the sake of the story. Rather than simply performing difficult subject matter, she sees cast and creative team members working to make every moment feel rooted in something truthful. “Everyone in the cast and the team is just so honest and so willing to be vulnerable,” she said. That openness is essential, she believes, because Dear Evan Hansen is not a show that allows performers to remain safely behind their characters.

“You can’t do a show like this and have walls between people in the cast,” she said. Instead, performers must be willing to open themselves up — to one another and eventually to the audience. Tims predicts that connection will be unmistakable when the lights come up. “The energy’s going to be palpable in the theater,” she said. Audiences, she believes, will feel not only the weight of the story but an “abundance” of honesty coming from the people telling it. She is not approaching the character simply as an actress imagining what it feels like to be an overwhelmed mother trying desperately to reach her child. She is approaching Heidi as someone who understands what it means to love a child fiercely, to advocate for him, to wonder whether you are doing enough and to keep moving when life demands that you somehow do a million things at once.

For Tims, the role ultimately comes back to a relationship she understands intimately. Her son, she said, is “my heart walking on the outside of my body."