Perelman Performing Arts Center is seen before a news conference is held to announce the center’s inaugural season events calendar, Wednesday, June 14, 2023, in New York.
AP Photo/John Minchillo
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s absence from New York City’s stages will be at most 14 months, with “Cats” returning in June 2024 at the World Trade Center’s new Perelman Performing Arts Center.
The $500 million building, the next-to-last element of the World Trade Center redevelopment to open following the 2001 terrorist attacks, announced its inaugural season Wednesday.
“Cats” will appear in June and July 2024 directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, with choreography by Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles.
The musical will have reimagined staging set in Harlem’s drag Ballroom Culture. Bill Rauch, PAC’s artistic director, said Ballroom Culture will come across in the casting, staging and design.
“Certainly Ballroom beats will affect how some of the songs are orchestrated,” he said.
Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” closed on April 16 at the Majestic Theater after 13,981 performances, leaving the legendary composer with no shows on Broadway for the first time since 1979. The original “Cats” production ran for 7,485 performances from 1982-2000, and a revival in 2016-17 ran for 593.
The PAC, designed by Joshua Ramus of REX, is to open with a ribbon-cutting on Sept. 13. A five-night opening called “A Concert Series to Welcome the World,” with pay-as-you-wish seating, begins Sept. 19 with “NYC Tapestry: Home as Refuge” that includes Laurie Anderson, Raven Chacon, Natalie Diaz and Angélique Kidjo, among others.
“Watch Night,” a multidisciplinary piece composed by Tamar-kali, co-conceived, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, runs from Nov. 3-18 and melds spirituals, opera and poetry. Luna Pearl Woolf’s “Number Our Days” a multimedia oratorio, runs from April 12-14. “An American Soldier,” the Huang Ruo…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply