Bill Rauch AB '84 is the inaugural artistic director of Perelman Performing Arts Center. His work as a theater director has been seen across the nation, from low-income community centers to Broadway in the Tony Award®-winning production of Robert Schenkkan’s ALL THE WAY and its sequel THE GREAT SOCIETY, as well as at many of the largest regional theaters in the country. His other New York credits include the world premiere of Naomi Wallace’s NIGHT IS A ROOM at Signature Theatre, the New York premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s THE CLEAN HOUSE at Lincoln Center Theater, and a site-specific OCCASIONAL GRACE in multiple Manhattan churches for En Garde Arts.

Q: As the inaugural artistic director of PAC NYC, how do you envision shaping its identity and mission in the years ahead?

We have a very special opportunity to make connections between people because of our location. Our part of the island has seen over 400 years of trauma and resilience, and PAC NYC exists to celebrate community and to affirm life on our particular site. We are also at the nexus of 13 subway lines as well as the commuter train to New Jersey and the Staten Island Ferry, which creates an additional mandate for people to come together in our building. Our campus is called the World Trade Center, which creates an additional invitation for us to be international in our programming, and to connect the dots between the past, current and future immigrants who populate New York City. As an artistic director, I want to honor all those layers of responsibility and opportunity by offering programming that is truly responsive to our city and our world.

Q: As a director, what draws you to a particular script or project? Are there themes or ideas you’re

consistently interested in exploring?

I have been privileged to direct a lot of new work as well as attempting to revitalize different types of classics throughout my career. With a new play, I’m honored to be the first interpreter of a writer’s vision. I’ll push hard for what I believe in, but ultimately it is my job to help the writer realize what they want to see for the first production of their work. With classics, I am always energized by the dialogue between then and now, between there and here. I love to attempt to scrape off the dulling glaze of inherited production traditions to find the truly vibrant colors of the original canvas. Across all types of work, I am especially moved by social context. Ballroom was created as a safe haven for marginalized communities—poor, queer, and transgender people of color—and our production allows the social context of Ballroom to truly ground the story of CATS with high emotional stakes.

Q: What inspired you to reimagine CATS through the lens of Ballroom culture? How do you see the two worlds intersecting, and what made this blend so appealing for a modern audience?

I started by envisioning CATS through a queer lens. I imagined an elderly gay man singing “Memory” in a gay bar, and that particular queer context for that melody and those words really moved me. Then I began to spend time with the libretto of CATS, and I realized that of course it was not a bar, it was a ball—the entire show is set in a competitive annual ball, and was a perfect vehicle for a setting in the queer culture of Ballroom, created by Black and Brown communities over 50 years ago here in New York City. I began to collaborate with gender consultant and dramaturg Josie Kearns and Ballroom icon and choreographer Omari Wiles. The three of us spent almost a year dreaming of what the project might be, which culminated in a pitch deck that we shared with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s colleagues at the Really Useful Group. In both T.S. Eliot’s words and Andrew’s music, there is a real spiritual depth within the playfulness, with themes of mortality and cross-generational community-building—and the human context of our Ballroom setting allowed us to really excavate surprising depths that already exist in the material.

Q: What were some of the key challenges in balancing the original elements of CATS with the distinct style and energy of Ballroom culture?

So many of our choices were straightforward and clear; Ballroom and CATS fit together so naturally, it was often breathtaking. The two biggest challenges were the music (more on that below), and finding the right matches between each song and each specific Ballroom category. The song lyrics tend to be about one or at the most two characters, while Ballroom categories by their competitive nature require multiple individuals on the runway. It was difficult but thrilling to find organic interplay between the lyrics focused on one character and the multiple competitors in the category. Again, some of it came early in our explorations and really stuck, while others involved many false starts. We also found that it really helped to seek variety in terms of who would win the category- that, in fact, the winner wasn’t always the character that the song was about.

Q: How did you and collaborator Zhailon Levingston shape the directorial vision and execution of CATS: "THE JELLICLE BALL"?

Zhailon is one of the smartest artists I’ve ever known. He is also less than half my age, and it was a special joy to have a deep cross-generational collaboration. It’s hard to imagine how either of us could have directed this epic production by ourselves. We spent countless hours meeting in the two years before rehearsal started, in the hours before each day’s rehearsal, during lunch and dinner breaks, and of course after rehearsals. After careful prep sessions, we would often trade off who was leading a given session, both jumping in as inspiration struck. We also worked in separate rehearsal spaces simultaneously. I can’t wait to see all that lies ahead for Zhailon Levingston in our field.

Q: How did the performers approach their roles differently in this production, given the emphasis on both musical theater and the improvisational flair of Ballroom? In what ways did you adapt the original score or music to reflect the spirit and vibrancy of Ballroom culture?

It was freeing to approach the characters and their relationships within the context of Ballroom and as human beings. I am so grateful to the cast that over the course of the run they’ve continued to deepen their onstage relationships, but they’ve also never lost the spirit of improvisation and sense of play that are so essential to Ballroom and, frankly, to vibrant theater. Ballroom’s influence in the score involved a long and delicate process. It was a close collaboration with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s company, the Really Useful Group (RUG). In the end, we agreed that the insertion of Ballroom beats was most useful and most organic when it was linked to moments of actual runway competition. That sounds straightforward, but it was learned through extensive experimentation in our workshops as well as a two-day retreat between me and our RUG colleagues in London.

Q: How did you approach casting for this production, particularly in selecting performers with both musical theater and Ballroom backgrounds?

We had brilliant collaborators from X Casting, Victor Vasquez and Sujotta Pace. They were tireless in introducing us to performers from the Ballroom world as well as drag artists, queer nightlife performers, and of course remarkable musical theater artists. We did five workshops on this show over the course of two years: two full workshops, one music workshop, and two dance workshops. Those workshops were invaluable in allowing us to get to know so many gifted artists; it’s not a coincidence that the vast majority of people currently in our onstage cast were part of one or more of the workshops. Whether an artist was exclusively from the Ballroom world or from the musical theater world, everyone we cast had to have a genuine curiosity about both cultures and a genuine commitment to collaborate together.

Q: Ballroom culture has a strong sense of community and identity. How does this ethos manifest in the relationships and dynamics among the characters in The Jellicle Ball?

Cornerstone is the community-based theater that I co-founded with Alison Carey AB '82 when we were in our early 20’s, soon after our respective Harvard graduations, and that I was artistic director of for the first 20 years of my career. Cornerstone makes plays primarily in collaboration with communities. Some of my closest friends have said that The Jellicle Ball is the most Cornerstone-spirited show that I’ve worked on since my Cornerstone days, which I’ve taken as high praise. And that is because of the spirit of community that infuses Ballroom—it shaped every aspect of our process and it shapes all that is onstage.

Q: What do you hope audiences will take away from experiencing CATS in this bold, new interpretation?

The single word that almost every audience member uses in describing the show is “joy.” We always need joy, but it feels especially important in the world right now. Joy and love, both of which are very present in The Jellicle Ball. A dear old friend who is also a gay man sobbed in my arms after seeing a performance and said, “Can you imagine if we had seen this when we were 15 years old?” So, I think a lot about young queer people and their potential allies in our audience—they are why I hope that CATS: "The Jellicle Ball” will have at least nine lives after this first iteration.

Q: Looking forward, what upcoming projects or initiatives are you most excited about at PAC NYC?

I’m excited about many projects that we have in the pipeline, but right now I’m especially energized by The Democracy Cycle. In collaboration with Galvan Initiatives and over the course of three annual cycles, we are commissioning 25 new works of performing art that examine the promise and challenges of democracy both as practiced in our own country and around the world. A panel of arts leaders and democracy experts will pick the first eight of the commissions this fall. I can’t wait to learn what is on the minds and hearts of artists in theater, music, dance, opera, and multi-disciplinary work through this program.