Behind the Design: Cats
There’s beauty in the absurd. And when a musical is adapted from a book of whimsical poetry about felines, there’s a strong chance absurd is on the menu. When Good Night struck out to realize Andrew Lloyd Webber’s opus, Cats, one particular element of the show was particularly enticing — the way the musical, unfairly known as a “play with no plot,” can largely be free of time and space.
With our show now in the rearview, we wanted to share with you some of the story-building, concepting and Easter eggs the show’s creative team used as a north star.
The Concept
Though the show is often set in a London junkyard and contains plentiful references to British culture, the fantastical style of the show lends itself to a malleable setting of the stage. So to do our own twist on the ubiquitous and classic piece of theatre, we set ours in the end times… well, at least for humans.
In Good Night’s Cats, we exist in a world where an outbreak of plague has wiped out all humans and cats, seemingly immune, are left to roam the earth as they please. The Jellicle Cats meet once a year to perform their traditions — namely, a ball, the winner of which will get passage to the Heavyside Layer (and subsequently a new life) as the grand prize.
For our rendition, we posited that our somewhat omniscient elder, Deuteronomy, determines the lineup for whom will be eligible for ascension, chosen from delegates from each of the core regions of the contiguous United States. Each cat at the ball is either a competitor (the senior delegates) or an up-and-comer representative (the junior delegates).
This year’s competitors representing their respective regions are:
Jennyanydots
Rum Tum Tugger
Asparagus
Skimbleshanks
In addition to our official quartet of competitors, the mischievous mystery cat Macavity arrives and insists on being included in the lineup (we saw her as the ultimate write-in candidate)! And Grizabella is the secret sixth option only known to Deuteronomy — a candidate hand-picked by the Jellicle leader himself, only revealed once her biggest fan, Jemima, sees her potential and urges her to sing her song once more.
The way we bore out our concept was to create a scenario in which cats, left to their own devices, begin to adopt facets of human culture in their stead. (But, them being cats, everything is just slightly incorrect.)
To set the scene, we positioned our radio center stage at the top of the show, with looping EAS broadcasts establishing us in a time and space.
The Setting
To create our world of a post-apocalyptic cat revival, we aimed to transform the Belbas Theater into a hotel rooftop, ravaged by time and serving as the perfect tucked away backdrop for our Jellicles to host their annual contest.
Remnants of the human life before are littered throughout the space, including references to Jellicle traditions. Cat characters like Plato, Hysperia and George have pulled their names from their environment, words of seeming importance plastered on the walls of adjoining buildings.
While we established that many of the cats present don’t remember a time with humans, our elders, such as former cat model Grizabella and cat actor Asparagus, have memories of being a part of a culture before the plague.
To further exemplify the “doctrine” of cat-dom espoused by Old Deuteronomy, we even positioned the character of Bustopher Jones as a parable of sorts, a model feline that all cats aspire to (aka, one that is well fed and well dressed). Our playful nod to this came in the form of a giant sign advertising a sardine company. Naturally once the Jellicles saw this grand demonstration of cat excellence, surely this Bustopher fellow must be a cat worth revering!
We added one more layer to our cultural adoption motif in the giant billboard that loomed large over the hotel rooftop. Repairing the fallen pieces of letters in your mind, you might have picked up on the original message reading “JEB’S B-B-QUE.” (And that hungry pig mascot just underlines it, with a little bit of cat-inspired graffiti for good measure.) In our world, the Jellicles adopted their moniker from their most loved gathering space, assuming the word “Jellicle” must be meaningful enough to place high and in big letters!
The Aesthetic
Beyond the world our Jellicles inhabited, our cat actors wore the breadcrumbs of bygone time on their person as well! Our costumers strove to abide by the notion of “wearing human clothes, but slightly incorrectly,” with shirts worn as spats, overalls worn upside down, pants as shirts and a world topsy-turvy! Everything from luggage tags, to neckties, to tie line, to snack bags, to afghans, to scout badges, to curtain ties served as opportunities for feline accessorizing!
In the telling of our various stories, our cats play-acted as dogs, beetles, Bustophers and beyond — another fun facet of playfulness that our costume team brought to the proceedings.
The process for creating realistic fur and face came from our costumers’ meticulously hand-painted and hand-dyed bodysuits, with each cat receiving a particular inspiration breed to call their own. Bringing it home was the beautiful work of the makeup and hair teams, creating ears from tulle and hair braiding techniques, and faces worthy of a cat going to the ball!
And all the dancing? Even that had a playful relationship with our motif! Our choreographer brought elements of oodles of human dance into the show, from tap to ballet to contemporary to swing to lyrical to acrobatics to ballroom to voguing. It was intentionally diverse in style to match the frenetic and amalgamated tone of the rest of the visuals.
We hope you enjoyed this little walk-through of our Cats process and how we arrived at the finished product — it was a labor of love from a whole lot of creative local Sioux Fallsians, and we are so grateful to have gotten the opportunity to tell our story!
Credits: Scenic Design by Bob Wendland | Scenic Painting by Bob Wendland, Alex Thong Vanh, Molly Wilson & Team | Costume Design by Sarah Larson & Hailey Schmidt | Choreography by Lisa Conlin | Music Direction by Jane Ruud | Hair & Makeup by Madeline Fremarek & Team | Lighting Design by Matt Cook | Sound Design by Scott Spexarth | Stage Management by Betsy Gorham & MacKenzie Braak | Direction by Luke Tatge