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PATTEN: Yeah, in the original script, I was going down on Frankie for the entirety of “That I Would Be Good.” It was a hookup. Because the first line in the old script when I popped out was, “I’m really glad you got all that off your chest, but this has been a pretty intense hookup or a pretty maudlin hookup, even by lesbian standards.”

GOODING: I didn’t know that! I never put two and two together, maybe because I was seventeen, and I probably didn’t think it was possible.

But then the song dropped out of the show for the first workshop.

PATTEN: It wasn’t in the workshop at all. But I think they missed that song, and they missed that reflective moment for the young people in the show. Then it was Tom [Kitt]’s idea to put it together as a trio and to see where these three young people are connecting and disconnecting. It was a stressful day where we had to learn it, and then record it perfectly for Alanis to listen to it so we could have approval.

CIPRIANO: We were very picky on ourselves. We were like, “This needs to be perfect.”

PATTEN: We hadn’t actually met Alanis yet…

CIPRIANO: She was like this God to us.

PATTEN: Still is!

The three-part harmony came together so beautifully!

GOODING: I’m a sucker for a three-part harmony. Onstage every night it’s always something I look forward to, because it blends so nicely. I love that that song is a trio now.

CIPRIANO: I remember the first time that we hit that “sanity” chord, we were freaking out. We’re like, “Oh my God, this is gorgeous.”

PATTEN: There’s so much requirement for blending in this show as far as all the voices together and how the ensemble functions, but I think that this is sort of a special moment. Of not being a larger choral ensemble, but just the three of us. It’s not really about who is outsinging each other. It’s actually just about really listening to each other. I think the song has challenged us to do that.

“It’s actually just about
really listening to each other.
I think the song has
challenged us to do that.”

-LAUREN PATTEN

How did you all personally connect to the themes running through the song?

PATTEN: I mean, I think it’s probably the central human fear. I know it’s certainly my central fear and is just, “Am I good enough? Am I enough as a person?”

CIPRIANO: Especially as young people in this business. I mean, we came in, Celia and I were both seventeen. And we were like, “Are we good enough for this?” I mean, we’re still so young trying to prove ourselves in this business.

“We kind of became best friends
through that process,
which was really cool.”

-ANTONIO CIPRIANO

GOODING: I don’t think there’s ever a moment where you can look and say, “I went to sleep feeling like not enough, and I woke up the next day feeling enough.” I don’t think that will ever happen as a person. And it’s the falling into that truth, and it’s the realizing of that that is a constant struggle.

PATTEN: I think something that’s interesting to you about when you’re young, though, and I think we really see this super clearly with all three of these characters, is that you’re in this place in your life where you’re starting to become independent and to understand things about yourself that aren’t necessarily based on what you see modeled for you. That’s a really heightened experience and a really confusing experience.

This song is technically about a “love triangle,” though you are all struggling in your own ways. It is hard to say who is in the right and wrong in the situation.

PATTEN: I think something that I love about the development of the triangle is that it’s not about somebody being a bad person and somebody else being the good person in the situation. It’s just three flawed people.

GOODING: Trying to function.

PATTEN: Yeah, who are not necessarily the best at communicating. I think it would have been very easy for the show to go into the direction of Phoenix being this kind of jerk who’s just sleeping around and not really connecting with anybody. And I think it’s awesome that the show really avoids that scenario.

CIPRIANO: And that’s almost where it was in the workshop— because this scene went right into “Head Over Feet.” It went right into them kissing. There was no connection there before they jumped into this. So I think obviously it’s grown from the workshop.

PATTEN: “That I Would Be Good” is a big part of that because you get to see where Phoenix is coming from too, and you get to see the connection between Phoenix and Frankie.

GOODING: And I think that’s such an important takeaway from the show—as one of the characters who’s easy to pinpoint as the person “in the wrong” or “the bad guy,” because Frankie wasn’t faithful to her friend. I think a really awesome, a really important takeaway from this is that she’s sixteen, and a kid, and just trying to figure it out. She has no idea who she is when she’s placed in this community that is constantly telling her whoever she is is wrong.

PATTEN: Oftentimes, I feel like there’s this weird disparity between what young people actually go through in their real life versus what is portrayed in the media for young people as what they’re dealing with. But I think this really resonates with young people, because it isn’t afraid to get really complicated and messy and deep and deal with really intense issues. And that’s obviously taken from the depth of Alanis’s lyrics, which she wrote when she was eighteen and nineteen.