How Alanis Morissette's 'Jagged Little Pill' has Broadway talking about sexual assault
In the first act of "Jagged Little Pill," the new Broadway musical featuring Alanis Morissette songs, a teenager named Bella sits timidly on a sofa trying to piece together what little she can remember from a party the night before. Passed out from all the alcohol, she momentarily regained consciousness to see a male classmate on top of her.
Bella, who some may think drinks too much, blames and belittles herself. She tries to shrug it off and calls herself an idiot.
But a classmate, Frankie, shakes her head. "That's rape," she says. "It could happen to any of us."
Sexual assault is not usually a topic central to commercial Broadway productions. Movies, sure. TV shows, OK. Both of those industries more explicitly explore such stories onscreen, partly because so many sexual predators within those worlds have been exposed in recent years. Despite some exceptions, the same cannot yet be said of the theater.
