Cats

Cats is a dance musical telling the story of the Jellicle Cats' annual gathering to choose a cat to ascend to the Heaviside Layer.

The entire plot is essentially independent songs introducing characters, with a few common thematic threads throughout the show as a whole. To create distinct, motivated looks for each of the songs, I decided to establish color palettes for each character. Specifically, the Jellicle Tribe as a whole was medium blue; Jennyanydots was pink and yellow; Rum Tum Tugger was orange and dark blue; Grizabella was magenta; Bustopher Jones was gold and white; Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were purple; Old Deuteronomy was light yellow; Gus the theater cat was dark blue and warm white; Skimbleshanks was yellow and teal; Macavity was red; and Mistoffelees was white, cyan, and gold.

The lighting in each of the meet-the-character featured the color palette I assigned to them. A character's colors only appeared in other songs if they were explicitly featured (e.g., the Tugger colors were revisited in the "Tugger Steps" section of the Jellicle Ball, light yellow was used when Old Deuteronomy would have a solo in a song, etc.). The ideas revisited throughout the show are the unity of the Jellicle Tribe, Old Deuteronomy as the tribe's leader, Macavity as a feared mysterious cat, and Grizabella as the outsider. Therefore, these characters' colors (medium blue, light yellow, red, and magenta, respectively) were used throughout the show as a whole whenever their plotline came up, and the colors were otherwise avoided during any of the other one-off "meet the character" songs.

The color I was most intentional in its use in the show was magenta. Whenever Grizabella was onstage in one of her three songs, she always stood in a magenta downpool. The pool tracked her movements, never allowing her to step out of her assigned color, to symbolize her exclusion from the tribe. This changes at the end of Memory when Victoria touches Grizabella, indicating that she is accepted back into the tribe. Only then is she lit with Jellicle Blue and unified with the rest of the cast.


The Naples Players Academy of Dramatic Arts
Kizzie Theater, December 2025

Director/Choreographer – Dawn Lebrecht Fornara

Music Director – Charles Fornara
Assistant Music Director - Grace Condit

Costume Design – Mollie Berman

Lighting Design – Dallas J. Cook

Sound Design – Kohen Verrette

Scenic and Props Design – Amy Hughes
Assistant Props Design – Bridget Poulter

Stage Manager – Maria Hernandez
Assistant Stage Managers – Kate Condit, Brady Patterson

Director of Education – Jen Price
Artistic Director – Phillip Fazio
Executive Artistic Director – Bryce Alexander