The Jellicle Ball is a reimagining of Cats that has earned nine Tony nominations, including Best Revival of a Musical. Directors Zhailon Livingston and Bill Rauch update the story of defiant outcasts by placing it within queer ballroom culture. The concept grows from the idea of reinventing classic musicals racially while treating gender as a remaining barrier. Rauch connects Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Memory” to a queer context, imagining an older gay man and the melancholy of lost youth. The production expands Cats into a competitive ball, inviting audiences into the world of Black and brown queer people who formed community long before mainstream drag culture. The creative team aims for authenticity to Cats, T.S. Eliot’s words, and ballroom traditions, treating each as equally important.
"Rauch explained how he saw "classic musicals being reinvented racially," but felt like "gender was a final barrier." "I started thinking about Andrew [Lloyd Webber]'s extraordinary song 'Memory' in a queer context," Rauch recalled, "specifically an older gay man in a bar. There's such a melancholy in terms of lost youth in that song." That sparked the idea for something bigger. By expanding the world of Cats into a competitive ball, this new version of the musical invites audiences into the world of Black and brown queer people who strutted and posed together on the periphery decades before RuPaul's Drag Race."
""Think about Cats being street characters in a junkyard and ballroom being these historically marginalized people," Zhailon told the New York Times. "In ballroom, you have a centering of legacy and chosen family, the way cats have a tribe. Both take what's given to them, and turn it into something beautiful. We want this production to be authentic to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats,' to T.S. Eliot's words and to ballroom," Rauch added."
""All those things are of equal weight and importance to us. If there's a ballroom choice that doesn't honor the musical, or a musical choice that d""
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