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“It’s such a powerful telling of what it feels like to be a minority and to situate your life in the context of this country’s history…” [co-adaptor and performer Davóne] Tines said… “Anyone who feels less than someone else or who feels they can’t be their own self can enter into it.”

“I was interested in smashing together the opposing ideas of freedom, joy, spectacle, and oppression,” [choreographer Chanel] DaSilva says. “We talk about the Emancipation Proclamation. They were ‘freed.’ But what does that freedom mean? What does it mean today?”

Even as the production expanded, they hewed to the original text, says Schachter: “…You create power through repetition and cyclical musical behavior, within a pocket of the story.” They call theirs a “vaudeville oratorio.” It jumps through different genres…to sound out the idea of inheriting oppression across generations.

“The challenge but also the joy of the project has been in realizing the instructions Hughes left in the text,” says [co-adaptor and performer Davóne] Tines… “As a black man myself I thought ‘this can’t be esoteric, it has to be ecstatic joy’ and how that exists in the black community is gospel music. That resulted in a gospel number.”

Alanis Morissette’s album ‘Jagged Little Pill’ screamed onto the radio in 1995 with its cutting, confessional lyrics sung by a probing, emotive, remarkably young, female artist…
Now — more than 20 years later — ‘Jagged Little Pill’ has been transformed into a full-blown, rock-laden musical.

When Alanis Morissette first agreed to transform her epochal 1995 album ‘Jagged Little Pill’ into a stage musical, she had to do something that was unusual for her: listen to it.

…Helmed by A.R.T. artistic director Diane Paulus, the project features a world class crew behind the scenes, including Academy Award-winning writer Diablo Cody…as well as music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator Tom Kitt, who earned a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his work on ‘Next to Normal.’

…”I do think producers are opening those doors,” says director Diane Paulus… “In both cases you have these amazing female artists, and they’re now being allowed space inside the musical theater for their voice.”

A.R.T. is gearing up to expand the scope of the iconic album with a world premiere musical adaptation…We chatted with [Academy Award-winning writer Diablo] Cody about what you oughta know before the musical’s premiere on May 5 at the Loeb Drama Center.

Diablo Cody grew up in Lemont, Ill.—a town she remembers as having nine churches and zero bookstores. One early escape for her, and millions of other teens trapped in small towns, came with Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill.’

The stage version of ‘Jagged Little Pill’ sets a story steeped in hot-button issues like opiate addiction and gender identity to the singer’s raw 1995 album.