Co-director Zhailon Levingston first encountered Cats as a child watching the 1998 filmed recording, and during the pandemic began developing a production where the characters were "cats" in a colloquial slang sense. PAC NYC artistic director Bill Rauch had independently arrived at a similar queer-lens concept, initially imagining Grizabella as an older gay man singing "Memory" alone in a bar before the two converged on a ball as the setting. Rauch and Levingston did not initially know about each other's parallel ideas. Levingston learned of Rauch's plans and directly asked to join as co-director via Zoom.
The original premise of competing to ascend to the Heaviside Layer (Trevor Nunn's central conceit from over 40 years prior) was abandoned in favor of competing for ballroom glory, yet no lyrics or libretto were changed to accommodate the shift. The creative team felt the existing text already supported the concept, pointing to lines describing the cats as "queens of the night" who "come out tonight."
Omari Wiles, who has deep roots in ballroom culture as a vogue dancer and choreographer, brought on Arturo Lyons as co-choreographer specifically to represent a range of dance styles within the ballroom world.
During auditions, some candidates misread "ballroom" as "ballroom dance" (i.e., waltz, foxtrot) and prepared material accordingly.
Wiles and Lyons later noted on The Wrong Cat Died podcast that for every one rehearsal ballroom-trained dancers required, musical theater dancers needed two.
A rehearsal video of the company performing "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats", released in May 2024, before the production opened, went viral and drove significant public interest in the show.
Andrew Lloyd Webber issued a public statement in support of the production.
Chasity Moore, a ballroom dancer cast as Grizabella, initially worried the production risked cultural appropriation. She came to embrace the role after connecting with the character's metaphor: a ballroom icon, isolated from a community that has moved on without her.
