Mentally I'm Still Here

I wore a grey leopard-print bodycon dress on the PATH train.

This was, for me, an act of courage.

I owned the dress. I liked the dress. I had apparently even decided at some point that I was a person who could wear the dress. But wearing it in my house and wearing it on public transportation were two entirely different propositions.

Still, I was going to Cats: The Jellicle Ball, and the dress felt right.

I had cat ears, too.

The premise was basically Cats, but make it ballroom. I knew Cats. I had seen the original Broadway production as a kid. I owned an old copy of T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I could still hear the television commercials promising “Now and Forever at the Winter Garden Theatre.”

I had also seen the 2019 movie.1

On Christmas.

With my parents.

We don’t need to talk about that.

I was intrigued by The Jellicle Ball, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. How exactly did Cats become ballroom? Would it still feel like Cats? Would it sound like Cats? Would everyone look like horrifying human-cat hybrids?

The last question, at least, was answered immediately.

No.

There were a lot of cat ears, though.

I bought a fan (actually, two!) before the show. My seat was at a table alongside the runway, near the judges’ table. There was complimentary Prosecco waiting for me.

June 22, 2024

My seat (cabaret seat A13) was right up against the runway stage, and came with a complimentary pre-show "glass" of prosecco.

My assessment at the time:

I felt FANCY.

And then the Ball started.

There were performers on the runway, beside the runway, in the audience. Seats I’d assumed were empty turned out not to be empty at all. Characters occupied them. People were dancing and voguing just feet away from me.

Sometimes they looked directly at me.

This created a problem I would fail to solve over the next two years.

If a performer is six inches away from your face and making eye contact, are you supposed to maintain eye contact? Is it rude to look away? Is it weird to stare? Are they actually looking at you, or are they doing Performer Eye Contact and looking vaguely through your skull?

I never figured it out.

But almost immediately, I felt like I was IN IT.

And Cats, somehow, made sense.

Not that Cats had never made sense. I understood the basic premise. Here are some cats. They have names. They would like to tell you about themselves. Eventually one of them gets selected to ascend to the Heaviside Layer.

But putting those cats inside the structure of a ball made the whole thing click differently.

Of course these characters would walk a runway and announce themselves.

Of course Munkustrap would be an emcee.

Of course Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were from Victoria Grove, NEW JERSEY.

Of course Rum Tum Tugger was insanely hot, increasingly naked, and definitely not interested in me.

Of course Skimbleshanks was an MTA worker.

Cats was a joke to people, but this felt less like a joke and more like a celebration.

And then Grizabella walked in.

This Grizabella wasn’t simply an old, bedraggled cat. She was a trans woman who seemed to have fallen on hard times, someone whose glamour and beauty belonged partly to another moment. Her clothes were tattered. Her makeup wasn’t perfect. The world around her seemed to have moved forward without her.

Then she sang “Memory.”

I think I uncontrollably wept.

“Memory” had always felt different from the rest of Cats. This Grizabella made the song earn its place more.2

It made sense to me for the first time.

Some things took eight performances for me to discover.

Grizabella took one.

Come One, Come All

On the train home that night, I was already looking for another ticket.

I knew it was something special. I didn’t know how long it was going to last. There was no guarantee it would transfer to Broadway, or tour, or ever exist again.

I couldn’t risk not having a chance to see it again.

Four days later, I bought another runway seat.

When I went back on August 10, I sat at another table along the runway, but in a different location.

There was stuff happening everywhere.

Not just the main action. Characters had little interactions. Performances continued at the edges. Something interesting could be happening on the other side of the room while I was looking at the runway.

There was no way to watch all of it.

And slowly I started to realize that maybe I wasn’t supposed to.

Not every element of the performance was for every person in the theater.

I understood the audience better, too.

This was not a sit-quietly-with-your-hands-folded audience. You could react. You were supposed to react. You could laugh loudly and cheer and let the performers know you were having a good time.

Eye contact remained terrifying.

Progress, not perfection.

Then the PAC run ended.

And for more than a year, that was it.

In October 2025, Cats: The Jellicle Ball announced it was going to Broadway.

I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale.

10s, 10s, 10s Across the Board

On March 18, 2026, I was at the first Broadway preview.

I thought I had bought third-row center.

The runway configuration meant I was effectively front row center.

I posted:

March 18, 2026

Curtain call after the show's first preview, as seen from Center Orchestra Row C Seat 107 (and my pre-show perspective)

It turned out to be my least favorite seat.

This is not a complaint about being front row center at a Broadway show. Please do not revoke my theater privileges.

But I couldn’t see enough of the floor of the runway. I spent a lot of time looking up. My neck hurt.

After eight performances from eight different locations, the seat that sounded most obviously like the Best Seat in the House was the one I would be least likely to choose again.

The Broadway version felt simultaneously bigger and more intimate than PAC.

Riotous joy. Clacking fans. People reacting to everything.

It felt like the celebration had gotten louder.

Behind me were the parents of Baby Byrne, who was making her Broadway debut as Victoria.

I knew this because they were talking to someone sitting near me before the show. Once I knew, I could see Baby playing to them. I could hear them cheering for their daughter.

They loved EVERYTHING.

Months later, the show’s Instagram account asked people to share favorite memories. I mentioned sitting in front of Baby’s parents at the first preview and listening to them cheer for their daughter’s Broadway debut.

One of her parents replied.

They remembered me and “your friends.”

The people I had been talking to weren’t actually my friends.

I didn’t correct them.

We were all friends in that moment.

Comment thread on @catsjellicleball Instagram (2026)

I go to theater alone all the time. I like going to theater alone. I don’t have to coordinate schedules or negotiate ticket prices or worry about whether the other person is having a good time.

Usually, when I go alone, I mostly keep to myself.

At The Jellicle Ball, I kept talking to strangers.

I don’t know why.

Three weeks later, on April 8, I was back at the Broadhurst for the first public performance after Opening Night.

Opening Night had been the night before, but for all intents and purposes, this was opening night for the rest of us.

This time I was sitting onstage, in one of the runway seats.

Andrew Lloyd Webber was directly behind me. He and Lin-Manuel Miranda were the guest judges.

This is a completely normal sentence about my life.

The onstage runway seat was even more immersive than my PAC runway seats had been. Performers were in front of me, beside me, behind me.

They sang at me.

During curtain call, André De Shields almost knocked over my drink with his costume.

There were things happening behind me that I couldn’t comfortably turn around to watch, and somehow I didn’t really feel like I was missing something.

Characters changed for me as I kept coming back, too.

Bustopher Jones hadn’t particularly seized my attention at PAC. Somewhere along the way on Broadway, that changed.

This Bustopher, played by Nora Schell, wasn’t asking me to laugh at a fat body.3

What I saw was someone who didn’t need to be skinny, whose fatness wasn’t played as a joke. Someone feminine who didn’t dress traditionally feminine but never lost their femininity.

I may not always feel feminine. I may not always dress feminine.

But being a woman is core to me.

Being a woman is a challenge and a privilege.

Even if I don’t always feel connected to my gender.

I liked seeing someone take up that much space without their body being the punchline.

Skimbleshanks snuck up on me.

My first reaction to turning the Railway Cat into an MTA worker had basically been: okay, that’s fucking brilliant.

Then there was the attitude. The uniform. The subway-car choreography. Emma Sofia.

By June 18, my public commentary had reached:

The Moments of Happiness

That night I sat onstage again, this time front row Stage Right. Same broad category of ticket as April. Completely different experience.

Characters congregated near me. They entered and exited nearby. There were moments when dialogue felt like it was being said almost just for me to hear.

The man sitting next to me had flown in from Florida that day specifically to see the show. He worked at a theater there and didn’t believe The Jellicle Ball would ever tour to his area because it was too conservative.

So he came to New York.

We talked about theater. We talked about favorite characters.

Cynthia Erivo was the guest judge, which means I can technically say I once shared a Broadway stage with Cynthia Erivo.4

This will eventually be useful for Two Truths and a Lie.

Afterward, there was a Pride and Community talkback with members of the company and representatives from Stonewall Community Foundation and The Center.

“Cats, but make it ballroom” was an easy way to explain the show. But there was a depth to the performance beyond the logline.5

During the opening song of the second act, “The Moments of Happiness,” images and footage from queer and ballroom history appeared. I remember recognizing Marsha P. Johnson, among others. Sometimes what I recognized was the moment on the screen more than the individual people in it.6

The audience would erupt at different points, people responding to histories they knew.

I didn’t know everyone.

I didn’t recognize everything.

But they all deserved to have recognition.

I cried during “The Moments of Happiness” almost every time I saw the show.

What got me was the joy these people put in the universe even when the world seemed to be against them.

There are parts of me that recognized home in that room.

Before The Jellicle Ball, I had only encountered ballroom culture through screens. This was still theater, not a ball, but seeing it live was different. It was a living, breathing thing. I knew the show was tightly choreographed, but in the moment it felt spontaneous and joyful and real.

I sometimes wondered whether somebody would look at me and see a tourist.

Instead, I felt like I was being welcomed into a space that a part of me wanted to be welcome in, in a way where I didn’t feel like I was invading or unwelcome.

It felt like home from the first time.

Safety. Joy. Being with other people like me. Seeing pieces of myself in some of the characters.

On July 3, the production celebrated 100 performances.

They had invited fans to submit photos, and somehow mine ended up in a video displayed on the outside of the Broadhurst Theatre.

There I was.

On the side of a Broadway theater.

The show thanked “this community.”

I commented:

And on my Instagram Story:

I posted that before I knew the show was closing.

The ending didn’t make the community important in retrospect.

It already was.

July 3, 2026

Cats: The Jellicle Ball celebrated it's 100th show and even though I wasn't physically there that day, I got to be a part of it.

The show gave me permission.

Permission to be me.

Unbridled joy. Unshy. Loud. Visible.

Visible meant not shrinking, not hiding parts of myself. Existing in time and space and owning it.

Loud meant speaking up.

The woman on the PATH train in the leopard-print dress was already me.

She was scared people were looking at her.

She wore it anyway.

2026

Signage outside the Broadhurt Theater.

Now, Finally, Forever

On July 13, I found out Cats: The Jellicle Ball was closing on August 8.

That night, I bought a ticket to the final performance.

I also texted my friend Tara.

We had been trying to find a date to see it together. She couldn’t do August 8 because she was leaving for vacation the next day.

Done.

I had originally imagined continuing to see the show every couple of months.

Suddenly there were twenty-six days left.

There was still more.

There was less time.

July 24 was the only one of my eight performances I attended with a friend.

I was nervous Tara wouldn’t love it as much as I did.

This was ridiculous. Tara loves theater. She had seen the original Cats multiple times.

Still.

This had become one of my Things™.

You want people to like your Things™.

June 24, 2026

Thank you for the blue leopard print ears, Tara!

She loved it.

The woman sitting in front of us had brought a bag full of fans and was handing them to anyone who didn’t have one and wanted to participate.

Nobody had appointed her Official Jellicle Fan Distribution Coordinator.

She just did it.

That night, while I was actually sitting inside the Broadhurst, Emma Sofia recorded and delivered a Cameo I’d commissioned from her.

“Listen, life is filled with ups and downs and duality,” she told me.

And:

“The only constant is change.”

Which was a slightly rude thing for Skimbleshanks to tell me eleven days after I learned that Skimbleshanks was being taken away from me.

After the show, I went to the stage door for the first time.

I met Emma. I thanked her for the Cameo.

She hugged me.

Six days later, I sat in an opera box.

Performance number seven.

July 30, 2026

The view from Box B - up close and personal with DJ Griddlebone's booth!

My post before the show:

The box was on theater left, beside the area where DJ Griddlebone spent much of the show.

And apparently DJ Griddlebone had been performing an entire other show for the past six times I’d been there.

I am exaggerating.

Slightly.

There was so much happening over there that I had never seen. An entire layer of the performance had existed the whole time, just outside the version of The Jellicle Ball available from my previous seats.

Seven performances in, and there was still more.

Only later did I learn that this was intentional.

Scenic designer Rachel Hauck has said different seats were supposed to offer different experiences.7

I had no idea.

I thought I had discovered something about this show I kept seeing.

It turns out I had.

I wasn’t repeating an experience.

I was accumulating one.

After performance seven, I posted:

“I can’t believe I only get to see this one more time.”

I was getting my life.

I was already grieving it.

Life to the Everlasting Cat

August 8, 2026

The marquee outside the Broadhurst announcing the closing date.

On August 8, I made a day of it.

I went to the Museum of Broadway. I talked to staff about the show and how sad I was that it was closing.

Then I got to the Broadhurst way too early.

Naturally, I talked to strangers.

Some of them had already been at the matinee.

For my eighth performance, I sat somewhere new.

Front row mezzanine.

For the first time, I was looking down at the runway.

I could see so much.

Not everything.

There was never an everything.

The applause was bigger. Longer. Louder.

Macavity normally sings about “a man over there with a look of surprise.”

That night:

Everybody knew.

I ugly cried more than I thought was physically possible.

I wanted to soak in every single moment.

And somehow it was still ridiculously fun.

It was joyous.

It was funny.

It had magic tricks.

It had Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer.

It had Macavity nearly throwing a mannequin into an opera box.

It had toot toot.

When curtain call started, I recorded the whole thing.

Backstage workers came out. Members of the creative team came out. Qween Jean came out with her Tony.

People hugged.

Nobody seemed to want to leave.

The last two people I remember leaving the stage were André De Shields and Qween Jean, together.

And then we had to leave too.

August 8, 2026

After the final bows, the cast shares a hug. The audience, myself included, was also not ready to say goodbye.

At the stage door, I didn’t want autographs.

I wanted to thank people.

So I did.

I thanked Bill Rauch, one of the show’s directors. I’d met him at the first Broadway preview and talked to him a few more times over the run.

I thanked Emma Sofia. I thanked the people I could.

August 8, 2026

Closing night stage door! Left: Emma Sofia (Cassandra/Skimbleshanks) Center Top: Ken Ard (DJ Griddlebone) Center Bottom: Xavier Reyes (Jennyanydots) Right: Bill Rauch (Director)

At least we knew there would be a cast recording. A week earlier, Tempress Chasity Moore had announced it during curtain call.

At least that part would live.

I had my videos. I had pictures. I had memories from eight different views of the same show.

If I could see it a ninth time, I know exactly where I would sit.

There was an opera box on theater right, beside Gus.

I never sat there.

I never sat on the onstage banquette either.

There was still more.

There would always have been more.

Three days after closing, I posted a picture I’d taken from my final seat, looking down over the runway.

August 8, 2026

I captioned it: