Costume designer Qween Jean is no stranger to building worlds through her work, but Cats: The Jellicle Ball offered an especially rich canvas: reimagining a classic musical through the lens of New York City ballroom culture.
The radical reinvention of Cats, which opened on Broadway on April 7 after a hit 2024 off-Broadway run at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, transforms Jellicle Ball into a joyful, high-energy competition, drawing on the legacy of ballroom while maintaining the spirit of its feline source material.
Jean—who made her Broadway debut earlier this season outfitting the cast of Liberation—said the show’s melding of those two worlds felt like a “golden ticket” opportunity, and exactly the kind of ambitious work she wanted to be part of. “This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life,” she said. “It felt like an invitation to show the world what I could do, but also to show the world what ballroom really is.”
Conceiving some 500 costumes for the production...READ MORE