Biesior basically summed it up quite well. However, as a beginner in Play, I find that a bit more clarification with a concrete example might be helpful.
First, the following example is for Java.
Suppose you added a new field
public String dum_str;
in your model Dum. Then, you will need a 2.sql under conf/evolutions/ like this:
# --- !Ups
ALTER TABLE dum ADD COLUMN dum_str VARCHAR(255);
# --- !Downs
ALTER TABLE dum DROP dum_strdum_str;
I hope this would be helpful.