An Open Letter to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Michael Harrison, and LW Entertainment
The Issue
To all the above acknowledged,
Cats: The Jellicle Ball will close on August 8, 2026 after roughly 150 total performances. What happened inside that theater over the past several months was not a revival. It was a reclamation. A generation of artists, many of them queer, Black, and Brown performers who rarely see themselves centered in your work, took Cats and turned it into something that felt urgent, alive, and unmistakably theirs, all while staying true to the score and the world you built decades ago. Three Tony Awards later, the industry has confirmed what audiences already knew: this production mattered.
When a show like this closes without a cast recording, it does not just disappear from marquees. It disappears from history. There will be no way for the people who found themselves in this production, and no way for the people who never got to see it, to hear what this cast, this orchestra, and this creative team built together. That loss is permanent in a way that closing night is not.
This is not a request for charity. It is a request for stewardship. You have spent years speaking publicly about the responsibility that comes with success in this industry, and about your frustration with people who have the means to do right by the work and by the artists who make it, and choose not to. This is that moment, for you. You have the resources to preserve this recording. The community that built this production, and the community that has kept Cats alive and relevant for over forty years, is asking you to dofor this cast what you have asked others to do when they were in a position to help: show up, fully, when it counts.
A cast album is not a favor to fans. It is an act of preservation for a piece of theater history that you have as much claim to as anyone, and that this cast, many of whom may never get another role like this, deserves to have documented. The petitions asking politely are well intentioned, but they are missing the actual case. This is not about hoping you feel generous. It is about whether the values you have spoken about publicly extend to the artists who just gave your work its most vital reinterpretation in decades.
Preserve it. Not because it is owed to you, but because you are the only one who can.
Signed,
Your Extended Jellicle Family
896
The Issue
To all the above acknowledged,
Cats: The Jellicle Ball will close on August 8, 2026 after roughly 150 total performances. What happened inside that theater over the past several months was not a revival. It was a reclamation. A generation of artists, many of them queer, Black, and Brown performers who rarely see themselves centered in your work, took Cats and turned it into something that felt urgent, alive, and unmistakably theirs, all while staying true to the score and the world you built decades ago. Three Tony Awards later, the industry has confirmed what audiences already knew: this production mattered.
When a show like this closes without a cast recording, it does not just disappear from marquees. It disappears from history. There will be no way for the people who found themselves in this production, and no way for the people who never got to see it, to hear what this cast, this orchestra, and this creative team built together. That loss is permanent in a way that closing night is not.
This is not a request for charity. It is a request for stewardship. You have spent years speaking publicly about the responsibility that comes with success in this industry, and about your frustration with people who have the means to do right by the work and by the artists who make it, and choose not to. This is that moment, for you. You have the resources to preserve this recording. The community that built this production, and the community that has kept Cats alive and relevant for over forty years, is asking you to dofor this cast what you have asked others to do when they were in a position to help: show up, fully, when it counts.
A cast album is not a favor to fans. It is an act of preservation for a piece of theater history that you have as much claim to as anyone, and that this cast, many of whom may never get another role like this, deserves to have documented. The petitions asking politely are well intentioned, but they are missing the actual case. This is not about hoping you feel generous. It is about whether the values you have spoken about publicly extend to the artists who just gave your work its most vital reinterpretation in decades.
Preserve it. Not because it is owed to you, but because you are the only one who can.
Signed,
Your Extended Jellicle Family
Supporter Voices
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Petition created on July 19, 2026