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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:18] Gordon Cox: Last week, Variety hosted its annual Business of Broadway breakfast, celebrating the 2019-2020 season, and Variety's 10 Broadway Players to Watch, our list of the season's breakout talent, both on stage and backstage.

[0:30] Gordon Cox: There was also a keynote conversation in which I interviewed the president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions, Thomas Schumacher, who listeners will remember I spoke to for the podcast back in June for episode 79.

[0:42] Gordon Cox: The breakfast also featured a talk with the creators and producers of the upcoming musical Jagged Little Pill that featured writer Diablo Cody, director Diane Paulus, and producers Vivek Tawari and Eva Price.

[0:54] Gordon Cox: It was a great conversation about the origins of a show that takes the songs from Alanis Morissette's smash hit album from the 90s and uses it as the inspiration for a story that feels urgently relevant to today.

[1:05] Gordon Cox: So I thought I'd share that conversation with you here.

[1:07] Gordon Cox: Moderated by Eric Paikush from City National Bank.

[1:10] Gordon Cox: Here are the creators of Jagged Little Pill.

[1:13] Eric Paikush: Hi, good morning, everyone. My name is Eric Paikush at City National Bank. This is our second year supporting this event. We're thrilled that you're here this morning. It's great to see so many friends in the audience.

[1:22] Eric Paikush: I just want to point out a couple of my colleagues here from City National. Rich McCune, who heads up our East Coast entertainment division, Stephanie Dalton, who's the team manager of our New York office, and my colleague Rita Pelosi, who's also with me on the Broadway team.

[1:36] Eric Paikush: We have a really exciting panel this morning, and I want to go ahead and invite our panelists up to the stage. We've got the outstanding creative team behind the new Broadway musical, Jagged Little Pill.

[1:46] Eric Paikush: Starting with producer Eva Price. Come on up.

[1:49] Eric Paikush: And director Diane Paulus.

[2:01] Eric Paikush: Book writer Diablo Cody.

[2:08] Eric Paikush: And producer Vivek Tawari.

[2:17] Eric Paikush: Great. Thanks so much. So thanks for coming. I know you've got a lot of rehearsal time going right now.

[2:26] Eric Paikush: All right, terrific. So, as many of us remember, in 1995, Alanis Morissette released her album Jagged Little Pill. And this album introduced a generation of us to Alanis' spectacular voice and gave us powerful songs that dealt with angst and fear and anxiety and hope.

[2:45] Eric Paikush: And really it was a great album for a generation of us. The album went on to sell 33 million copies and is considered one of the greatest albums.

[2:54] Eric Paikush: So our topic this morning is the business of Broadway. And with that, I wanted to kind of open it up, maybe Vivek, to start it off and just say, you know, with this background with this album with Alanis, where did the idea come from and how did you start making this into a musical?

[3:15] Vivek Tawari: Okay. So to give credit where it is due, the light bulb moment about Jagged Little Pill would make a great musical belongs to Arvind David, who is the third lead producer on the show and unfortunately is sick, so he's not with us today. But he sends his love and his regards, and you'll all meet him soon, I hope. But it was at a tea that turned into a three-hour dinner that we were having, in which I was talking about my background in the music industry. I started my company 20 years ago and have been involved in Broadway for a couple of decades. But before that, I worked for record labels, and I grew up here in New York City and was going to see punk rock shows at CBGB's from the minute my mom let me out of the house while she was simultaneously taking me uptown to see Broadway shows and ballet and opera.

So I grew up kind of loving music. Music was my first love, I always say. And I had the great joy of being one of the producers on American Idiot. And in the wake of that show and my background in the music industry, I was getting a lot of really interesting opportunities, meeting with a lot of wonderful artists, bands, composers, et cetera, from the pop, rock, urban, country worlds. And I just wasn't finding a project that felt like it had story. For me, story is really important. I either was meeting with wonderful artists who had great catalogs but didn't have a story idea, and I didn't have a story idea, or feeling that the music was inherently not theatrical. And so I was explaining all this to Arvind, and Arvind said, you know, I always thought Jagged Little Pill would make a great musical.

And so the light bulb belongs to him, but it went off in my head that night as well. And going home that night, I put the record back on and had certainly heard the songs. They're perennials on the radio, so it's not like I'd forgotten the songs, but I hadn't listened to the record straight through in a long time. And that's an interesting thing because people don't consume music so much that way anymore. It's all about streaming and playlists and you pick your songs. So I listened to the record straight through from start to finish. And it was the first time also that I had listened with musical theater ears, if you will. And it struck me how theatrical these songs were. The songs are recorded and have a feel that is very epic in scope and sound, much like our cast album will.

I'll give a little quick plug to that. And you know, it feels, you know, so they feel very big and epic, like a big rock band, big arena sound. But the message is small. The message is like here's what happened to me one summer, here's what's going on with me and my parents, here's what happened in a relationship that just ended. And that to me is the definition of a great musical theater song. It plays to the back of the room, but makes you feel like you're right inside one person's head. And that's what Alanis has always done. And so, you know, I'm a producer, not a music guy, so I called Tom Kidd. You know, Tom Kidd is one of my dearest oldest friends in the world. He's our orchestrator and arranger and music supervisor on the show.

And I said, Tom, you know, Arvind, this Arvind, one of my friends that made this comment. I listened to this record. I think these songs are theatrical, am I right? And he said, You're right, and I'd love to work with you on this. And that was sort of the beginning of the journey. The music industry is a very small industry. I didn't know Alanis' manager at the time, but we were one degree of separation, got an introduction, and I flew out to meet Alanis. And I can stop there because I don't want to keep—I could talk for the rest of this panel, so I'll stop there. But that was the genesis of it all.

[6:36] Eric Paikush: Sure, sure. And well, actually, my second question is also on the music side. Obviously, the rights to music are very important for these shows. Can you give us a little bit of background on what that process was like, without getting too much detail, but just kind of what that process was like, getting the rights, knowing that there was?

[6:44] Vivek Tawari: Yeah, yeah. I mean, getting the rights to do these kind of projects is always very complicated. It's becoming easier because there are more and more of these shows happening. So the publishers and the artists and managers and the gatekeepers, so to speak, are understanding why the gates should come down. But it is very challenging, and it takes years, in many cases, and certainly in this one. And this is a show that had the sell-in of the artist. I took that meeting with Alanis in LA. It was a wonderful—we had a three-hour lunch. It was, you know, we hit it off on all the ideas from that this should not be a show about her, it should be a show set in the current day, it should deal with important issues of its time, it should also be funny.

You know, we hit it off on every single creative level, and she said, I want to do this, and I'd like to do it with you. And she instructed her publishers and her managers, and still it took years. And that's just because publishing—it's—and as they should be. The publishing companies are protective of these important music catalogs that they have. And there's a lot of people that have to chime in and be educated. You know, I'm very glad that there are events like this. Broadway, as many of you know, is a back-end business. We can and do make a lot of money, but it's usually on the back end; there aren't gigantic advances, and people need to understand that. And there's a lot of education that goes into licensing your music for a Broadway show; it's very different than some other licensing deals you may have in front of you.

But it can be worth it, both creatively and financially. And so you have to do some educating, even with the big music publishers that you would think you don't need to do that kind of education, depending on who has been controlling the catalog. There is an educational process, and there's often many publishers involved. You know, we had to deal with Universal Publishing on the Alanis side and Bicycle Music Publishing on the Glen Ballard side, and Bicycle during the course of our negotiations was acquired by Concord, so that complicated things as well. And again, none of these things are complicated to the point of being, you know, sort of—it's just not unusual, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.

Like it's complicated, but that is also business as usual, and so you really do have to spend the time figuring out who owns the rights, getting the buy-in of the creatives, educating everybody as to how the theater business works and why it's worth doing, and then just pay attention to the business and see who's buying who, because that could change who you need to talk to. So that did take some time.

[9:17] Eric Paikush: Right. So you got Alanis on board, you had Tom Kidd on board, you got the music rights. So, Diane, when did you get involved? And you know, striking out with Diane to start, artistic director ART and Tony-winning director. How did you get involved in the project? And you know, what part did they bring you in?

[9:32] Diane Paulus: So Vivek and I have known each other socially for years, back to like high school. And he said, you know, let's get together for breakfast. So, as these things do, they happen over coffee and meals. And actually at the time you were just finishing acquiring the rights, and you were very responsible. You said, I don't have them all yet, but when I do, and I said, How long? You said maybe one more month. Would you be interested in this concept of Jagged Little Pill? And so I think, you know, as an artist, you're always checking your gut on is this something you want to put your life, soul, blood, time, energy into, because you know it's years of commitment. And I had this intuition; it was December 2015, maybe.

And I just thought there was something about that album that needed to be heard again. Just like a sense of potential, which is sort of what I look for as a director. Like, I don't know how we're gonna do it, but you need to sense the potential. And so I did the same. I went home, listened to the album, and I was sort of thunderstruck by the power of the songs. And you know, everybody knows "You Oughta Know," but then you listen to every song and you think, oh my god, it's a range of emotion. You know, Alanis is not just an angry rocker chick; she's also, you know, deeply personal, deeply interrelational. You know, there's such a range on that album, which is what I hadn't remembered. And so I said, I'm in kind of immediately.

And you know, I'm a great believer in putting things on a course of development. And that's what I obsess about is like what does the show need? How long do you need to develop it? What kind of commitments can we make? I happen to run a theater, so I can give it a home, give it an incubator, and we started that track. And if the one thing you told me is Alanis didn't want it to be a biopic, which was great because I thought, let's not do that. That can be done, but maybe there's another potential.

[11:53] Eric Paikush: So then it was all about drum roll. The book writer, as we know, it's always about the book writer in musical theater. And I know Diablo, you came into the project a little bit later than some of the other folks on the team. So why don't you tell us about how you got involved, to where that was in the cycle of your career?

[12:11] Diablo Cody: Well, you know, I had my agent call me about the project, and typically, like when I'm trying to decide what I would like to work on, I ask myself, if somebody else got this job, would I want to kill them? And that was the exact emotion that I experienced when I heard it: would you like to write the book for a Jagged Little Pill musical? So I had to leap at that opportunity lest I cause bodily harm to one of my peers. And of course, when I heard about the creative team, I mean, because so many of the pieces were already in place at that point, they just needed a book. And I just, you know, I thought, oh, these are these people that are legit. This isn't gonna be some rinky-dink production. I'm excited. And I've never done musical theater before, so it was terrifying but exciting.

[13:04] Eric Paikush: Right. You had a successful career, you know, films for Juno and for Young Adult, TV, United States of Tara. So this is your first Broadway book. So what was that like, given your background in film and TV, now coming to this world?

[13:17] Diablo Cody: I mean, I feel like Diane's been exceptionally patient with me as I learned the ropes. And it was thrilling, honestly, because I wasn't aware of the level of freedom that people have in the theater, and I wasn't aware of it. It's just like for as a writer, the opportunity to do things over and over and over again is a thrill. I love it. And also it's just the—you know, when we did the show at ART, just the thrill of performing for a live audience every night. I mean, it's just intoxicating. So for me, it's been always wanting to be in the theater. She was so funny because she said, I never go to see my movies.

[13:53] Diane Paulus: I was like, you're gonna so awkward. You're gonna have to see every preview. And she's like, you gotta sit there. And I was like, no way. So I would just like walk, I would just walk around in the back, and if I couldn't handle it, I would just put my head down and pace. The actors are like, you look fucking weird back there. But you know, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive the process. So Diane, can you tell us about the choreography? I know you were working with um, I'm gonna get his name right. City Larby. A remarkable choreographer named uh City Larby Chicawi. Uh he um he was introduced to me. I didn't know his work. He was introduced uh to me by as Devlin, who's a friend and a set designer, and she was a Jagged Little Pill fan, and she said, Oh my god, you gotta get Larby is how he goes by L-A-R-B-I. And I just looked online and and he had such a remarkable range.

He he has uh done work with Anthony Gormley, with uh uh with his own contemporary dance company in Belgium. He's half Moroccan, half Belgian Belgian, and uh, and then of course he's done a lot of Beyoncé. He did the, if you remember the Grammy piece where she was pregnant and she like went back in that chair. That was Larby's choreography. So um it it's like, how am I gonna get City Larby Chicawi? Like impossible, but you just put it out there, and he happened to be in New York working with the Martha Graham Company, and um got an introduction through Ez, and we met over coffee at a Le Pancadidian downtown on a break. And I think like everyone in this project, it it was like the call of that album.

It turns out he was a teenager in Antwerp, like surviving his life listening to Jaguar Lopel like nonstop. So um he also kind of put everything aside and and jumped on board. And what's remarkable um about his work is his storytelling. You know, it's it's it's so hard in the musical theater um to bring so many people together and get everybody driving on the same story, but he's been um unbelievable that way. Kind kind of like collaboration of my lifetime with a choreographer, just very, very seamless um partnership on the staging, the movement, and and the kind of physical life of the show.

[16:10] Diane Paulus: Yeah, I I just want to quickly add, you we've been talking about sort of when everybody came on board, and uh you mentioned like it was probably 2015 and you were probably shortly after that. And that lunch that I had with Alanis was a little over eight years ago. Um, but the truth is one of the promises I made Alanis at that lunch was that we would take whatever time it took to get the right creative team together. And we never went through a process of like putting a director list together or a writer list together. I mean, both Diane Paulus and Diablo Cody were mentioned in that first lunch eight years ago, but it takes time. You guys are incredibly talented and and busy uh and and agents have other projects and priorities that are on their plate, so the the gatekeepers also have gates to keep.

Um and so just you know, as the this is a business of Broadway uh breakfast. So I will say that some of you may think that like eight years, that's fast, and others of you might be like, gosh, eight years, what took some so long? You know, depending on where you sit in the business of Broadway, that's either a long time or not. But um, but really what took us so long, if you view it that way, is that it takes a long time to get the music rights, and it takes a long time to get the right creative team. Um and I'm obviously biased about this show, but I think what makes it so special is we have the right creative team. And if that takes eight years, then so be it. Um so I just wanted to quickly say thank you guys for for being the right creative team and and and for your patience in getting in us getting here.

[17:32] Eva Price: Sure, and and Eva, you know, you've worked with a lot of shows over your career. Um, what has this team been like? I mean, it's obviously relationship driven and you know, with other teams you've worked with, it's a collaboration. How's it been on your side working with this team and bringing it together?

[17:44] Eva Price: Well, I sang you out of knowing in the shower, sophomore year of high school many, many mornings. So for me, it it's it's incredible. It's it's a live stream. Vivek and I have been friends since 2010, and um I actually ran into him in the street in around 2013, and he told me he was doing he was trying to get the rights to this album. I lost my mind, and I said, When you get the rights, call me. Um, and it it's um it, you know, it I don't know many shows that even though they've been developed over a course of seven, eight years that actually have an intense period where they are written, developed, and brought to the audience this quickly, which is was which is what we've been able to do sort of in the same era of politics and social culture.

Um and that means a lot to me because I believe in the stories that this prescient woman wrote 25 years ago, um, because they're speaking to today in a way that nothing else has that's that's coming abroad way. So, you know, I I feel grateful, proud, humbled, exciting, very passionate that um that that this creative team was able to meet in 2016, 2017, when America had changed and the culture had changed, and and we're able to reflect all of that within this America that we've been in in the last few years. So that that to me is a is a really joyous moment.

[19:19] Diane Paulus: That's great. And you know, we're obviously we're missing Alanis on stage here today. Um, but can you talk about collaborating with her, you know, as a as a Grammy winning writer? This is her first time on Broadway. What was that process like working with her as part of this team?

[19:32] Eva Price: She she was um remarkable to work with, I have to say, and and you know, when you bring people who haven't been part of the theater into the theater, it can work many different ways. You know, I had an amazing collaboration with Sarah Borellis, and she came and sat at ART for you know three months and was in every rehearsal, and that was incredible. Alanis had a different approach, but it was equally effective and profound. Um, you know, we would have Skype sessions with her, and we would just talk about the album, and she would give us books to read, and we'd talk about what the songs meant. Um, and and then Brooke came up with a story, pitched a story first to me, and I said we should just pitch it to Alanis, and we were on a three-way Skype.

And it was um it was a it was an incredible exchange of ideas. And what was I think so special about Alanis is that um she was super passionate about the ideas in the album and the songs and what they meant and ideas that we could put in the show, but she she then was like, over to you guys. This is not what I do, I trust you. You know, go do your thing. So it was this amazing uh combination of really caring and kind of like mother spirit guiding us, but not controlling the process. And she's done that at every stage. I mean, she came to ART, she saw a week of previews, she had profound comments, you know, on details, like a they can't wear that shirt. You know, they can't wear that shirt. I'd be like, You're right, you're right.

Take that shirt off. You know, I have to just tell the story because it's such a tribute to Alanis. There's a she watched one run through, and there's a scene where there are people online in a pharmacy, and it's a very incredibly funny scene that books written. And she was watching it, and when the rehearsal ended, she said, You know those people online at the pharmacy, Diane? I said, Yeah. It's like the ensemble are kind of, you know, like looking at their watch and checking their phones, kind of annoyed because the the our principal character can't get the prescription she wants. And she said, you know, when when you're actually in a pharmacy and someone's having a hard time, you're kind of empathetic.

You know, you kind of just you don't check your watch, you just kind of hope that like they get get it together. I was like, You're right. Went up to the actress. I was like, here's a note from Alanis. And it like changed the scene. If you see the show, just check out the people online in the pharmacy. They're very empathetic in that moment. But I mean, it was it blew my mind, you know, that that she was giving me that kind of sensitive note, you know. It wasn't about like my music and what are you doing, it was really about the humanity of the piece. But you you should know she's Alanis is uh fascinated with human behavior, psychology. She has like an entire podcast about like psychoanalysis, like this is her thing.

So for her, I mean, I I love her so much. And working with her, yeah, she's specifically interested in the behavior of the characters, the motivations of the characters. It was never about ego or my music or anything like that. I mean, she gave us I mean, I never in my life would I think I'd be sitting rewriting Alanis Marset lyrics, and like she gave me permission to do that sometimes. Like that's a crazy, crazy privilege. Um, so yeah, she's um, and like the show is what it is because of her. Like she was the one who told us what it needed to be, and I don't think we would have found we wouldn't have found the story without her. We she she had to be involved on the level that she's been involved, and she also trusts us, which is to have to have earned that trust and to have honestly to have her approval of the show.

Like she's she's so enthusiastic, she loves the show, and that makes me so happy because that's honestly that was the goal. And her notes were always like, Can we make it deeper? You know, and so we did a whole first pass at it, and then we flew to her house in Malibu with Tom. Yeah, and we just sat in her little recording studio with a whiteboard, and she wanted to draw all the characters, and she just put lines. She's like, This one of characters connect to this one because of this history, and there's a dynamic here. I mean, she was psychoanalyzing every single character, trying to just make every character feel like they had maximum humanity, and so that we could understand it. But it it wasn't really about like the the plot or the narrative, it was about the kind of source.

[23:48] Vivek Tawari: Yeah, and I on the business side, she she is also a dream. You know, I had mentioned that that uh when I was when we were coming up with these ideas, I was meeting with a lot of rock stars, you know, and uh and invariably these rock stars would want to meet at fancy bars that I could never get into if I wasn't with the rock star um or exclusive restaurants. So I'm like flying out to LA and I tell Alanis's raps, like I'll take her anywhere she wants to go. And she asked me to take her to the Le Pan quotidien. You know, and we get there, and it's so busy and they don't take reservations and there's nowhere to sit. So after we started our chat uh w online, waiting to be seated, we never got a seat, and we wound up get squeezing in two spots at the communal table.

And like that is Alanis to a T. I mean, she is not an ordinary human being. She is a genius and so full of empathy, but she carries herself like any normal person, any normal member of the community. She is much more comfortable discussing Jagged Little Pill at a giant table, surrounded literally by members of the community who can overhear our conversation than she would be at some fancy bar discussing can I have the rights to your music? And that's the way she's been throughout this process. Community has been so important to her. You know, we uh we toss around the word family a lot with Jagged Little Pill. If any of you have been following the show or watching our interviews, we're a family, not a not a company or a crew. And uh and it's but it's actually true, and it really comes from the top, it comes from Alanis, like that's how she lives her life, and it's very inspiring.

[25:19] Eva Price: That's great. And Eva, could this have been made? I mean, it's been 25 years since the album came out. Could this show have been made five, 10, 15 years ago? I mean, sure. Anything could have been made five, 10, 15 years ago, but it feels so of this moment in every way. And you know, I I think Vivek said it best a few minutes ago, is these things happen when they happen. They don't happen by design, they they happen organically and by coincidence. And it it is very coincidental that these lyrics and these stories that if you listen to actually feel like a musical theater album back in 1995, feel very today. And I I think we are really blessed that we have this opportunity for a Broadway audience that wants challenging, authentic, life-affirming, beautiful, entertaining, heartwarming material.

[26:16] Vivek Tawari: What would you say? Hopefully.

[26:18] Eva Price: Hopefully material. Um, you know, you want to you want to come to the theater and you want to connect. That's the whole point of theater, right? You want to have catharsis and you want to connect, and that's what she's written. And I think that as a commercial endeavor is more ripe for today than ever before. So it does feel like an urgent, emotional, big-hearted musical is for this season and for this time. So I do feel like timing is everything.

[26:50] Gordon Cox: Great. Well, we're excited to welcome you to Broadway this season. I think uh first previews are in November.

[26:55] Eva Price: November 3rd.

[26:56] Gordon Cox: Opens on December 5th. So I think with that, I'd like to wrap this up and thank our guests for this morning. Eva, Diane, Diablo, and Vivek.

[27:07] Gordon Cox: Thank you. That was Diablo Cody, Diane Paulus, Eva Price, and Vivek Tawari, the creators and producers of Jagged Little Pill, which starts performances at the Broadhurst Theater November 3rd. If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, please tell a friend or tell some strangers. And rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to Stagecraft. I'll be back with another new episode next week. Until then, see you at the theater.