I was able to give Andrew Lloyd Webber a tour of this building, PAC NYC, when we were still a construction site, and Andrew had already given us permission by then that we could do a new production of Cats.

And he said, I have one piece of advice for you: "Make it immersive."

People are hungry for unique experiences.

I think there is a kind of I think people are also, like willing to pay for experiences that are really unique.

Proscenium opera is gorgeous and amazing, but I think immersive opera gives people the chance to watch performers live, and it's really thrilling to do and to have people respond to that.

House Mothers, prepare your kittens... Cats - The Jellicle Ball is a new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's iconic musical Cats, set in the ballroom scene that roared out of New York City over 50 years ago.

It's a celebration of the heritage of ballroom culture, New York club life.

And then also the experiences of POC and adjacent LGBTQ+ people.

I first thought about the song "Memory", and I thought about an older gay man singing that song in a gay bar.

And I just thought that context would be very moving with that song, and the lyrics and the emotion in the song.

And then I spent more time with the material, and of course, it is constantly referring in the libretto to the Jellicle ball.

Jellicle Cats meet once a year on the nights we make the Jellicle choice.

A once a year competition that is the Jellicle ball.

And I realized it's not a bar, of course it's a ball.

And Grizabella is not a gay man.

Grizabella is a transgender woman, and I began to work with some brilliant collaborators, Josie Carnes, who is our dramaturg and our gender consultant, and Omari Wiles, one of our choreographers.

And the three of us began to conceive of it.

And so we've matched up the ballroom setting with Cats.

Ballroom is a category based competition.

It was born out of the idea that so many disenfranchized members of the LGBTQ community, especially those of color, don't get the opportunities in life to perform, but also to be business executives or to wear Yves Saint Laurent.

Black and brown queer communities doing extraordinary, work on runways in competitive balls.

You can do that in the ball and get that recognition and find that status.

One of the things that I embrace most wholeheartedly about the production is the range of generations that are on the stage, telling the story that is about generational baton pass.

There's a judges table at the end of the runway, who are legends or icons.

Legends are people who have won multiple trophies and grand prizes, and icons are people who have done something out in the world to raise the stature of ballroom to a higher level.

They are revered in the community and given those places of honor to come in and, you know, either give you your tens or chop you.

We really wanted to cast those roles with real icons of their respective worlds, and we wanted some of the freshest young talents from the ballroom world and the musical theater world to be part of the production.

PAC NYC, our full name is Perelman Performing Arts Center is here on the campus of the World Trade Center.

It was the vision of our board chair, Mike Bloomberg, and many other people that there needed to be arts and culture as part of the rebuild of this area after the tragedy of 9/11.

The building itself is a marble cube.

It was designed by Joshua Ramos, a brilliant architect, to be appropriately respectful in terms of being adjacent to the 9/11 memorial.

But this cube is covered with, translucent marble that's very, very thinly sliced, and sunlight comes through during the day.

So you get this gorgeous, gorgeous golden glow during the day.

And then at night, the building is lit from within by custom industrial chandeliers.

And so the marble glows from within at night.

So it was really designed to be a beacon of hope.

I was lucky enough to give Andrew Lloyd Webber a tour of this building when we were still a construction site.

And Andrew said to me, I have one piece of advice, which is: "Make it immersive."

When they described what the show was to me, I don't know that I fully understood that, like our stage was going to be a giant runaway.

Cats needs to be in the most immersive space possible, where the audience and the performers are really in the room together, and we took that very seriously.

I've done quite a bit of immersive theater that got me comfortable with walking up to an audience member and looking them dead in the eyes and saying something and knowing that they might be super uncomfortable with it and not want any part, that they might reach out and grab you and try to kiss you, you never know what you're going to get.

For queer performers, the nightlife world, the drag world, and the ball world offer us a performance venue to express ourselves that we don't get in other arenas.

That is always immersive.

You're always in the round in a bar or a club, so that more than anything, I think got me comfortable with the idea of going up to people in this environment, because, I mean, the way they have the theater set setup, it tricks my mind into thinking I'm at a hot club night right?

We have three theater spaces that are each relatively intimate, by design, and we can create up to 62 configurations of audience and stage.

And, Cats is able to bring so much joy to audiences in part because of those flexible spaces.

A lot of theaters are not able to build a runway.

We actually have a runway here.

And then you have the cabaret seats, though you were able to interact with the audiences.

It was just great.

The audience really is that missing cast member in this show.

We don't know what the show is without them there.

It's nothing without them there.

When you are at a club, especially in the gay world, when somebody comes out to perform for you, you scream for them.

It's not the often judgmental world of theater, where you come out and you're an unknown and they're like.

Let me see what you got.

This one is you come out and they're like, you give it to me, right?

And they're excited about that.

We hoped that we were creating something in a certain spirit, but we didn't know until the audience arrived.

Every one of these performers, as different as they are, the different worlds they come from, the different skill sets they have, every one of these performers knows how to be generous with an audience, and how to be present with an audience, and how to exchange in the moment, with the audience.

Being so close to them for both the performers and the audience members, allows our energy to pass more freely.

It allows them to personalize us, and we become more human to them because we're going to come up and, we're going to be gentle with them, but we're also going to be fun.

It might seem a little dangerous that some of the things we're doing right in front of them, but also exciting, and I call it a joy feedback loop.

What we were able to achieve with our production of The Jellicle Ball was a comprehensive display of humanity.

No one left feeling excluded.

To really give them a taste of what ballroom is like and what it's like in a community where we often don't get the opportunities that other people have to seize your moment.

Maybe that's what they appreciate.

You know, a lot of people say when they're coming out, they're like: "I can't stop feeling.

And it's like, I'm on drugs."

I can't, I can't go to sleep for like three hours, maybe four after the show because I'm still so hyped about it.

So that's what being so close to a group of people who are loving on you so much does in the space.

It's the best party in town.

Life & Trust is an interpretation of the Faustian narrative.

So JG Conwell is our kind of Faustian character.

He interacts with Mephisto.

The show takes place on October 23rd, 1929, which is the eve of the Great Crash.

And you're invited to, a soiree at a bank in the Financial District of New York.

You're there as a prospective investor in the bank and as part of the wooing of you as a customer, you get to go back and meet the founder of the bank, this aging robber baron, J.G.

Cornwell.

We're all capitalists here, Mr.

Conwell.

And when you meet him, he has just learned that tomorrow a financial tsunami is headed towards him and he makes a fateful choice, which is a bargain: for one night he can go back 35 years in the past and relive the prime of his life again for one night only, in exchange for his soul.

And there all of these stories, inspired by real events in the Gilded Age that are all sort of fast and inspired stories that collide around this building.

We're here.

Steps from the New York Stock Exchange.

It's a playground like none other, and it's so fascinating to watch somebody come in for the first time.

And just like: "I have no idea where I am, we're going."

The space that we're inhabiting is I lost count at 100,000ft Right?

So it's massive.

It was a bank, but it has not operated as a bank for at least 40 years.

So it has been primarily this dormant jewel, in the heart of the financial district.

And that was just so inspiring as a place to begin from and to spin out from.

We transform raw space in this building into a variety of locations that are sort of like meant to be a fever dream of the Gilded Age.

So there's stables here.

There's stables with a boxing ring inside.

There's a masonic society, there's a mini World's Fair, there's a hangout for radical artists.

There's sort of Thomas Edison style laboratory.

You can really get lost in there in the dream world of the show.

All levels of participation are welcome and encouraged.

There's room to just be a voyeur and to sit back and watch some really beautiful, emotional, lovely, impactful art.

And then there's also room to jump into it, to read through the pages to have an intimate experience with one performer.

It's physical theater.

There's a lot of choreography, there's a lot of movement.

But it's not just a dance show.

As a performer, not only am I it quite literally responsible for the well-being physically and emotionally of this person, but I also get to make micro adjustments to my performance in response to that.

When you're in such close proximity to a performer, there's a really sort of special quality that you have to find in the people inhabit.

This kind of work, and I like to think that they're the kind of people who sort of bring a stage with them wherever they go.

As a physical artist, as someone who my body is my instrument, it's constantly navigating like, oh, I want to do the same.

One would do x, y, z. But also I shouldn't They create a kind of theatrical aura around them.

It's almost like they have a self generated spotlight on them.

And that's just a certain alchemy, a person is capable of doing that.

I think audiences definitely are more aware of of immersive shows and how they interact with especially immersive theater or open world immersive theater, which this is right.

I think some people come in they are sort of space completists, where they want to see every nook and cranny of the landscape and some people, I think, get hooked onto the kind of catch onto a character floating downstream and go and follow them.

I sort of think the latter is the more gratifying approach, actually, to stay with a person and see the world through the lens of a character.

The form has grown tremendously, and it's been like catapulted into like it's almost like a niche mainstream.

I don't know, there's something about it where it's like there's a big mass audience and it's like the is growing rapidly.

We have a lot of experience of as consumers at this point in terms of how we curate what's in our lives and how we watch what we want to watch and trends.

And kind of taking that into theatrical space, I think, is one of the things that makes immersive very attractive to people at this point, and why there's been a large audience for it.

There's still so much to be discovered, like the genre has, over the decade, everything has felt new, it's felt unique, it's felt not necessarily everything is derivative as of any one show.

I think the field is just it's kind of in this ever expanding thing right now.

On Site Opera is an organization based in New York City that is dedicated to bringing opera out of the opera house and into the community by producing site specific and immersive productions of opera.

The company was founded in 2012 by Eric Einhorn and Jessica Kiger, who had a long history of working in opera and wanted to create something that would just be different.

They wanted to produce opera in a way that could really connect with people and break down some of the barriers.

Most opera companies are producing in large venues, and when a person goes to an opera, they're sitting maybe several rows back.

There's an orchestra between them and the performance.

And it's a wonderful experience, but it's not an intimate one.

Opera can be grand and intimate at the same time.

We're used to: "I'm singing to 4000 people."

And really, it's I'm singing to maybe 150 people.

And it requires us to be a lot more honest and a lot more efficient.

It's like almost film work in that the smallest intention, the smallest gesture, is actually far more powerful than this, which is what opera singers are used to.

We did Puccini's opera Il Tabarro, which is a beautiful, tragic love story that takes place on a shipping barge.

We actually partnered with the South Street Seaport Museum, which owns a few historic ships that are located right down there at Pier 17.

And we selected the light ship Ambrose.

The ship that we would have to walk up on a plank for would change based on the amount of water and the amount of waves.

And so some days it was a sort of a regular inclination.

In other days it was very steep, and I would have to regulate where I would breathe because it changed.

It felt very alive.

For "Amal and the Night Visitors" we partnered with the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, and we also partnered with Breaking Ground, which is a supportive housing organization.

We worked with them to say, listen, this opera we're producing has a chorus and we would love it if we could have some of the tenants from your building be part of this chorus.

So they were really able to bring a personal resonance to their role as chorus members.

And blended it into an incredibly powerful, modern setting of this story in a soup kitchen.

And the power of this was was palpable.

When we're casting for these shows, first and foremost, we're looking for really incredible singers.

But it's also really important to us that we have people who are up for a challenge and who are nimble and adaptable.

What you have to do, especially in immersive opera, is let go a lot.

That is very difficult for opera singers because we are control freaks.

We're like, I have to sound good.

I have to say in this way.

One singer told me that she performed with us for a concert, and even though this was a role she had performed a million times in her career, suddenly it had new depths, new meaning, because she was allowed to use her body more freely.

We've had younger audiences coming to our shows, audiences from a lot of different racial and cultural backgrounds, people who are completely new to opera are coming to our shows, as well as people who have been going to opera for many, many years.

But now they're suddenly seeing it in a completely new way by attending something immersive, by attending something site specific.

Immersive shows give us an opportunity to safely connect in a safe way that we can experience that emotion without having to live it.

As the audience member, I think that's a wonderful way to remind ourselves that we're all connected.

The Tiger's Bride is an adaptation of the original Bluebeard fantasy story or fairy tale.

Most of it is pulled from the text by Angela Carter called The Bloody Chamber.

It's a series of short stories, kind of modernizing and exploring the darker relationship themes within.

Bluebeard is a wealthy man who lives atop a hill in his castle above a poor village.

He decides to take a wife from the village one day, and she is elevated into wealth.

On the day of their wedding, he says, I'm so sorry, but I have to leave the castle on business.

Here are the keys to the castle.

You can go anywhere you want.

Just don't use this one key.

So she decides to go looking for what it opens.

And when she opens a door that it fits, she looks inside.

And what is there to be seen?

But all the dead brides that he has murdered.

I'm also, in the physical theater.

I do a lot of aerial.

And so I started thinking of how I could make a variety show with each act telling one of these stories.

I then, started to get lots of input from other sources telling me to go in this direction of making it bigger, into more of an immersive world.

And I've always been fascinated with that.

There's a tremendous amount of freedom that comes with creating in the immersive space, especially in a nontraditional space like The Cell.

The space kind of becomes a character in the piece itself.

We've created an experience that is more than just circus.

I think it really incorporates the elements of live music.

It incorporates the elements of physicality and liminality, because we're getting to step into a fantasy world for about 90 minutes.

I am the musician of the castle.

I am playing for people as they are coming in.

And I also play music for the wedding ceremony that happens.

And then as characters basically come out of the walls and tell their stories, that's when my music also comes out of the walls and I help support them telling their stories.

I love immersive work.

I grew up in New York, went to all kinds of Broadway shows as a kid, and then I saw Sleep No More.

At the time, I was like, really blown away by how powerful and but also by how risque.

And it's like feeling like you're doing something wrong and getting away with it.

I think it's really quite stunning that in a matter of just a few years, audiences have become a lot more savvy to some of the tricks of the trade, and they've seen a lot of things before.

So I always start by asking myself, what have I seen that I really liked?

And what really struck me, and what did I not like when I was a guest or an audience member.

In the the dark days of the pandemic, the concept of immersive interactive entertainment felt so right because we were so deprived of any kind of interaction.

I'm thinking not just about what the character sounds like and how they're moving through space, but what does it smell like in here?

What does it feel like?

Incorporating physical sensation in a way that doesn't feel put upon or even audience participation, everyone hates being singled out.

How can we organically move the narrative along, while making sure someone feels taken care of?

I hope that people take away the idea that you should never demand anything less than truth and intimacy from the people that you care about.

In our wildest dreams, we might have said we want to create a production that equally respects Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats and Ballroom with equal authenticity and reverence and respect.

And that will be exciting and attractive to people from all these different worlds.

But to see it actually happen every day, it has been a gift.

It's amazing to me to watch the members of our cast, who came up only in ballroom, who have had nothing their whole lives, suddenly find this abundance and recognition, and I see them relax some of the armor that they've had to put up all of this time.

There's a whole community of folks, I think, who really are passionate about this art form and talk about it online, and when they see the show and that I think it's so great.

I actually think our community, our world is starving for that.

I think we've lost our way around human interaction and connection.

And so people flock to these kinds of opportunities because they're like, in a way, it's safe because they're not in it, but they are in it.

Audiences are more savvy.

People come in so much more eager for right away, opening every drawer or going through as they are going through every piece of paper.

That to me is different but also really exciting because it shows that there's an eagerness to engage.

I'm looking forward to the time when we have nine touring companies worldwide, so that everyone can experience what it's like to come to the Jellicle Ball and leave a changed person.