IMPORTANT: Alanis Morissette Takes “Jagged Little Pill” To Broadway

First off, you guys, I have to admit something.  I’m not a theatre person.  I love the idea of musicals – I really do! – and I’ve watched Liza Minnelli in Cabaret approximately 96,345 times, but it takes a great deal of pressure, whining, and Jewish guilt to get me to agree to see a Broadway play.  In all my years growing up in the NYC metro area, I’ve seen probably five shows total, and one of them was Cats when I was nine.

All that is about to change, because Playbill.com reports that Alanis Morissette (patron saint of adolescent feelings) is adapting her classic 19995 album Jagged Little Pill into a Broadway musical.  Morissette is working with Tom Kitt (who also helped arrange Green Day’s enormously successful musical American Idiot as well as Bring It On: The Musical) to orchestrate and arrange all the songs you used to sing into a hairbrush when you were very angry at the world but not quite sure why into stage productions.  Yes, you read that right – songs like “You Oughta Know,” “All I Really Want” and “You Learn” are about to become showtunes.  The show will be produced by Arvind Ethan David and Vivek T. Tiwary, who also produced American Idiot.

it's time to start the music, it's time to light the lights

would she [something wholesome] in a theatre?

“I look forward to taking the heart of Jagged Little Pill and expanding its story, fleshing it out into ever deeper layers of emotionality, specificity, humanity, power, physicality, spirit and fabulism,” Morrissette said in a statement. “I look forward to collaborating with Vivek and Tom and our whole inspiring team to create something greater than the sum of our parts.”  Enough about you; let’s talk about life for a while…

Will the Jagged Little Pill musical be as incredible and cathartic as the record was for all of us as angsty adolescents, or will it be colossally ridiculous?  Will Full House‘s Dave Coulier step in as the backstabbing ex-boyfriend?  Will any of the ironic plot twists actually be ironic, or just crappy things that happened?!  The future holds many mysteries, my friends.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!

Stef

Stef Schwartz is a founding member and the self-appointed Vapid Fluff Editor at Autostraddle.com. She currently resides in New York City, where she spends her days writing songs nobody will ever hear and her nights telling much more successful musicians what to do. Follow her on twitter and/or instagram.

Stef has written 464 articles for us.

19 Comments

  1. Tom Kitt is also the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning composer and co-orchestrator of “Next to Normal”. If he’s attached, I’m down.

    • He’s also working on the new musical If/Then staring Idina Menzel! Tom Kitt is a Broadway bigshot, and I think that fact that he is attached to this show is a vote of confidence for it. I’m so excited!!!!

      • There are so many queer women involved in If/Then (which just started previews in DC)! The music director, at least 2 actresses, and the company manager are all queer women!

  2. My thirteen year old self that was equally obsessed with musical theatre and Alanis is flailing right now. Crap, my thirty year old self is flailing right now!

    Also, I’m super excited about this collaboration with Tom Kitt. Besides his work on “American Idiot”, he is one of the writers for “Next To Normal”, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the most original musicals to appear on Broadway in the last few years.

    I have high hopes!

  3. DAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.

    With this and Sheryl Crow writing the music for “Diner,” it’s just a 90s lady reunion on the Great White Way.

    *crosses fingers for “Exile in Guyville” musical*

  4. What a coincidence, I heard One Hand In My Pocket earlier today on the radio, and then looked her up on Wiki to see what her last album was. Maybe it’s a sign I need to listen to Jagged Little Pill more and see this musical with fellow Straddlers.

  5. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am literally more excited for this than anything in my entire life!!!

  6. “Will any of the ironic plot twists actually be ironic, or just crappy things that happened?!”
    That is literally the best line I have read all week.

  7. So, are the Muppets part of the show?

    Stef, one of my friends had the role of “scardycat” back in the Eighties.

    Alanis. What a bright light to illume Broadway!

Comments are closed.