Delaney Brown
Delaney Brown
Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album that successfully urged a generation of women to give the middle finger to the patriarchy, rightly got the Broadway Musical treatment in 2018. With a book by “Juno” writer Dibalo Cody and a few new songs by Morissette to boot, the musical, which tackles weighty subjects like addiction, gender identity, and sexual assault, took home a couple of Tony Awards and got pegged for a national tour.
That national tour is now heading to Bass Performance Hall, where you can catch the musical from Sept. 15 to 17, including two matinee performances on Saturday and Sunday.
Leading up to the show, we got to chat with “Jagged Little Pill” cast member Delaney Brown, who answered the phone while the tour was making a stop in Houston. Brown’s a 21-year-old Dallas native who’s in the process of getting her BFA in musical theater from Pace University in New York. She’s in the ensemble and this serves as her first-ever national tour performance.
You can check out the entire interview below. And to purchase tickets for this weekend’s shows, go to the Bass Performance Hall website here.
FW: Hi, Delaney. How's it going?
Delaney Brown: I'm good. How are you?
FW: I'm great, thanks! So where are you guys at right now? Are you guys on tour?
DB: Yeah, we're in Houston right now.
FW: Right down the road.
DB: A couple hours. Yeah.
FW: So where do you guys go from there?
DB: We're here for two weeks, then we spend the first half of the following week in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then we come to you guys.
FW: So, you're spending two weeks in Houston? Well, that's not fair. I think you only got a few dates here.
DB: [Laughs] Well, I will say we're coming, I think, to the Winspear [Opera House in Dallas] in January, so you do get us twice. We're just spread out of it.
FW: And you’re from Dallas, right?
DB: Yeah, I was born in Dallas. I spent most of my life in Carrollton and didn't move to New York until I was 18 to go to college. So, I've spent all of my life in Texas.
FW: When did you decide musical theater was going to be your thing?
DB: I did decide it at the age of 5. So, do you know the show Glee? I've been like the Rachel character. I've been wanting to this since I was 5.
FW: So as a kid, you were a performer.
DB: Yeah, I always wanted attention. I always wanted to be singing the songs.
FW: And that can go one of two ways: Either parents can find that insufferable or they are really enthusiastic about it.
DB: Well, I think I would like to think my parents were very enthusiastic about it. At some point, they were very, very supportive.
Neither of my parents are musical theater people in the slightest. My mom is a veterinarian and my dad likes playing cool seventies Rock, so he likes some genre of music. I think he likes musical theater a lot more now.
FW: So, you ended up moving to New York and you're currently at Pace, right?
DB: Yeah, so I moved in 2020, which was such a good year to move to New York [laughs]. But I went for two years and then at the end of my sophomore year I booked this show. So I'm on a leave of absence right now doing this, and I've been on this tour for about a year now.
What’s cool about Pace is that it's in New York, so they're very much used to people auditioning for things and booking and leaving and then coming back. So, they have this cool thing where you write a lot of essays about what you learned [while performing], and that counts for certain classes.
FW: How did you become a cast member for “Jagged Little Pill”?
DB: I saw the show in high school, it's ironic (pun for Alanis), I saw the show the day of my Pace audition. So when I saw the show, I was, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I want to be in that so badly.’ But when they announced that they were closing [the show closed on Broadway in 2021], I could feel in my bones they were going to do a tour. And I remember texting my roommate and being like, ‘I have to be in this.’ And I didn't have an agent or anything, so I just submitted to the open call. I was lucky that I had met Mia Walker, an associate director, during a masterclass session and exchanged emails. So, when the open call came out, I emailed her so I could get seen because I didn't have an agent. And then I started auditioning, and it was a really long process. It lasted my entire spring semester.
FW: I guess the long process makes sense. They’re investing a lot in you. And to go on tour, you got to have good vibes, too, I would think.
DB: Oh, yeah. The thing with Jagged Little Pill too is it's such a younger cast, so they don't have a million National Tours and Broadway credits on their resumes. They're taking a chance on so many of us. And this isn't Broadway, where you can come do the show and you can leave and go home. We’re all living together and going to the airport together (and going through airport security together, which is a very vulnerable thing). You have to spend a lot of time with all these people, and I love them all so much.
Yeah. I was going to ask about the comradery that ends up developing when you go through that. Yeah, I was actually, it's funny, I was listening to, what's his name? One of the kin brothers who was on that show recently. He was on, I dunno, a TV show. And it lasted a few years, right? Secession or whatever. Secession. Yeah,
FW: So, I was, I think, 9 when Jagged little Pill came out, and it was everywhere. It was a huge cultural phenomenon. I think it was the first really angsty woman-led album,
DB: Like Female Rage.
FW: Yes, yes. So, though you’re quite a bit younger than me, and it was made even before you were born, what effect did Jagged Little Pill have on you?
DB: So, I grew up listening to Alanis, but my parents would only let me listen to the clean songs and not the bad ones [laughs]. So, “You Outta Know” didn’t enter my life until I had my first big high school breakup. And when I listened to it, my teenage heart went insane. I was like, ‘Where has this been all my life?’ But I mean, my generation has people like Olivia Rodrigo, who is very much following Alanis’ blueprint. But listening to Alanis was so eye-opening. She was the first mainstream rageful female singer. So, I love it. I think Alanis is wonderful, and I'm such a fan.
FW: I was listening to some of the songs you perform, which are a different take from what’s on the album. Was this done to make the songs suit sort the story you're telling on stage?
DB: Yeah. Well, one, Tom Kitt, who wrote my favorite musical Next to Normal,” he did the orchestrations for this. And it's just so different but still encapsulates that rock and that rage, but it's contemporary musical-ified, which is great for the story we're telling because it's so contemporary.
I think I remember seeing the show in high school and just being in awe of how effortlessly they have put these songs into this story. [The story] nothing to do with Alanis. It's completely new characters. But Alanis also wrote new songs for the show. So, having her do that, I think, also really helped to have personalized songs for the show.
FW: So, do you have a favorite song from Jagged Little Pill?
DB: Yeah, my favorite song is “Right Through You.” It’s only in our show for a second. It's in it, but I wish it was longer.
FW: Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
DB: I'm just really excited to bring this show to my hometown and for my friends and family to get to come see it. And I think the message will be really good for people in Fort Worth to see, and it'll be really fun. Yeah.
FW: Right, the message. The subject matter deals with a lot of topical issues. Why is it important for people, Fort Worthians in general, to get outside of themselves and see things that might make them uncomfortable?
DB: Well, I think the point of National Tours is to bring Broadway and the new shows to these small towns. And, I mean, if you look at Broadway right now, it's not your mom's “Oklahoma!” It's the revival of “Oklahoma!” that is making you think and question, and it's a completely new take on it. So, one, that’s the point of touring. You should be prepared for that. But two, I think it makes you more empathetic to see stories that have nothing to do with you. It will hopefully develop a feeling empathy towards [others]. I think that Texas is very much — I mean, I'm not hating on Texas, I love Texas — but I think it does have, sometimes, a self-centered viewpoint. And if people just looked around and looked at other stories and saw what other people were going through, I think that we would all be more understanding of each other. I think that that's the point of theater, so that you can feel empathetic and it brings a level of understanding.
