Ben Platt on How the Pandemic Could Result in a Renaissance of the Arts: ‘It Sort of Lights a Fire Under Everybody’s Butt to Create’

Singer, songwriter and actor Ben Platt says that he thinks the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic would perhaps lead to a renaissance of the arts.

All the contrivance in which by a TIME 100 Talks dialogue on Thursday, Platt, who originated the title feature within the significantly acclaimed Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen, suggested TIME executive editor Dan Macsai why he believes the long term of art is shiny amid all the pieces occurring at some level of the enviornment.

“I’m feeling very heartened by the actual fact that so many other folks own been persevering with to compose art,” he says. “I maintain in times of disaster or in times of hardship, if anything else, it style of lights a fire beneath all americans’s butt to create extra art. I maintain other folks own extra that they must deliver and write about and own a better need to glue than ever.”

On Could presumably 8, Platt released “So Will I,” a glossy single that he co-wrote with longtime collaborator Michael Pollack entirely over Zoom whereas self-setting apart at his childhood house in Los Angeles. The song speaks to just among the worries and fears that folks that are staying house to conclude the extra unfold of the virus would perhaps very neatly be feeling at as soon as.

“I positively wished to write down something that would perhaps resonate at as soon as but had the flexibility to stay on because, as all of us hope, that is a very rapid-timeframe misfortune,” he says. “I maintain the song is lots about when things salvage a chunk of overwhelming or when there’s too great misfortune otherwise you’re feeling style of weighed down by the heaviness of the enviornment — which I know I became as soon as feeling and I’m certain all americans is feeling at as soon as — that there are things that are fixed.”

Despite the actual fact that Platt describes writing over Zoom as a “style of dystopian journey,” he says that he and Pollack own been in a position to create the song in a topic of hours previous to sending it to producer Finneas to express it to existence. Platt delivered a transferring performance of “So Will I” as neatly as “Develop As We Bound,” a typical music from his March 29 debut solo album Mutter to Me As a change, stay from his fogeys’ house on Thursday.

On Mutter to Me As a change, Platt, who suggested Of us in February that he’s been out as contented since he became as soon as 12 years vulnerable, sings about “a curler coaster of a relationship that is an amalgam of the ones I’ve had.” He says that he hopes his resolution to be initiate about his sexuality can relief LGBTQ youths who’re struggling at as soon as.

“I continuously try beneath no circumstances to edit any of my tales or views or songs or pronouns or any of that. I try to unprejudiced correct-trying be as correct and as forward as I could presumably even be with who I am and my sexuality is a section of that,” he says. “Factual continue to see the art that displays you and listen to the artists that copy you and stamp the tales that copy you and know that there are other folks reminiscent of you who enhance you although the other folks that you’re caught with or quarantined with don’t basically.”

This article is section of #TIME100Talks: Finding Hope, a lots of series featuring leaders all over lots of fields sharing their tips for navigating the pandemic. Desire extra? Test in for entry to extra digital events, alongside with stay conversations with influential newsmakers.

Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.