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[0:13] Robert Bannon: Welcome to the round table, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us on the Broadway Podcast Network or over here on Broadway World and social media, wherever you are. You can be in an alley in a garbage can like a stray cat. I have a feeling we're gonna be talking about a lot of cats. I was gonna come on here and sing "Memory," but I got scared because our next guest has watched a lot of cat videos. He's spoken to a lot of people who have been cats. He's now a cat connoisseur with a podcast that people love right here on BPN. And he's not a theater person. Now he's a theater person, but he's like a tech, like he's smart. Like now that I have Mike's number, if my internet went out, I would call him.

But he also has a podcast about cats. And we disagree on his podcast. And that's not a spoiler. I'm not gonna tell you why, but he grilled me about my thoughts about cats, and now I'm gonna grill him about his podcast life. Mike Abrams, the wrong cat who the wrong cat died. He's here, and he's telling us all about it. Mike, welcome to the show.

[1:16] Mike Abrams: Thank you, Robert. What an intro. I'm excited to be here.

[1:19] Robert Bannon: I'm excited that you're here. And I think I was accurate-ish in your intro that you are not, you have no desire to tap dance on a stage and sing a giant ballad.

[1:29] Mike Abrams: None. I have no interest in acting, performing. I did some writing, I guess. That's probably the closest I got to anything for fun, but no, I've never tried to be a performer or wanted to be a performer.

[1:42] Robert Bannon: Where did you grow up?

[1:44] Mike Abrams: Indiana. I think if this video's on, I'm wearing my Indiana everything. I pretty much always have something Indiana on. Grew up on the north side of Indianapolis and grew up in a family where I did have a mom as a music teacher, so I did grow up in a musical household, but we grew up going to sporting events. I started playing hockey when I was three years old. We're a sports family through and through. And so we would do the national tours that came through. We would see like four or five shows a year that Indiana gets, and that's about it.

[2:15] Robert Bannon: So, like we said, everybody, no performing history, not he's not, you know, I tried to be an actor and now I'm gonna pivot, or I've been an actor and I'm gonna pivot, or I no performing history, but like you said, seeing theater, being a part of theater. But then you start working. Where was your first job? What do you consider your job?

[2:34] Mike Abrams: Yeah, so I mean I started, I grew up, I went to Indiana University, studied marketing, got my MBA from Indiana University, have been in the business world basically since I graduated, and have always been working in advertising, marketing, and all these different kinds of spaces and consulting. I currently work for Google full-time in retail marketing. I moved to New York for the job for Google in 2016, and that's kind of where this theater-ish journey took off because they put me in temporary housing in the theater district, and so I was, you know, five feet away from all of the different shows and kind of growing up, I love live. And so I was like, wow, I've got the pinnacle, you know, the best of the best doing their thing, and especially with musicals, like singing, dancing, things I can't even comprehend.

I was like, you know, I want to see some of them. So I moved during the peak of Hamilton. I moved during what ended up being the revival of Cats. I moved during a lot of these other things, and so I started going. I would get invited, I'd go, and it was just like it was something to do after work. It's fun to go to a Tuesday evening show in New York when you have that ability to go see, you know, again, the elite performers doing what they're best at at the highest level, just in your backyard for, you know, and playing lotteries and getting comp tickets and all kinds of other stuff. So I just ended up going to some of them, and one of them was Cats, and I knew nothing about it, didn't know it was being revived, didn't know how long it ran, had never seen it before.

I guess the times it came to Indiana, my mom took my sister and not me. And it wasn't until "Memory" where I was like, oh, I know that song, you know, like I knew nothing about what I was walking into.

[4:06] Mike Abrams: But I had an experience and I kind of made some jokes about it, wrote about it, and then did not think about that show again until 2019 when the trailer for the movie came out.

[4:30] Robert Bannon: Which is fascinating to me. This whole journey is fast. You know, my sister-in-law does marketing for Facebook, retail marketing for Facebook, and y'all have a hard job. Like you work a lot on the computer, and I'm always proud when I see the Oculus Glasses or the Ray Bans that Facebook made because I know that she had to go through 8,000 million emails to get that approved at some sunglass hut somewhere in Oklahoma. And she, like the work that you all do is hard, like it's hard work, and you need to decompress. People decompress with Netflix, they decompress with a football game, or people decompress with theater. So I can see you not being from New York, moving here, living in temporary housing and saying, hey, on a Tuesday night at seven o'clock, let me grab dinner and I'll go see a show. But I'm sure when you went in to see Cats, you never thought that 10 years later, you would be talking about it.

[5:17] Mike Abrams: Not at all. I mean, and I now will research before I go in, but I used to not look up anything before I'd go into shows, and that got me into trouble because I would get tickets to a show because somebody was Tony nominated, and then I'd win a lottery or I'd win something. And it's like you go the next night. And I still this day remember the one Fun Home, excellent show, extremely well. Misleading title. If you don't know, it's not fun. And so I went in not knowing anything and then walked out being like, wow, that's, you know. So that happened a lot to me early on with me coming in. And Cats was kind of that way. And yeah, I would have never expected that. I enjoyed going. I always liked going. And it was a kind of a weird way that I ended up here. It's been almost, I mean, it's nine years later from that, probably from that showing.

[6:04] Robert Bannon: So when you saw Cats, what was the impression that the show left on you? And why have you decided to do a podcast pretty much solely based on Cats?

[6:18] Mike Abrams: So there's two parts to the story. The first part was is that at the time I was blogging is probably the wrong term. I was newslettering home because I kind of moved abruptly, and I'm a very, I'm a born Brent Hoosier, like people didn't believe me when I said it felt like an April Fool's joke when I said I was moving to New York because everyone just assumed I'd lived in would stay in Indiana my whole life. And so when I got here, being in the Midwesterner, had never ridden the subway, like very much was just not used to the big city, which you know, like was fine. It was an easy transition, but it was a different transition. I'm a very observant person, and I liked humor writing. So I was writing to I would think I had about four or five hundred email addresses.

I basically put out on social media if I wrote this thing, would who would want to read? And I had so many people email me being like, add me to the list. It was like my parents' friends and people I worked with and people I grew up with, and so I was writing about my experiences in New York, the different things you see, the things you wouldn't believe seeing. But if you live here, if you ride the subway and you get in at Times Square every day, you see some stuff. And so I was writing kind of the humor back. And I just after I saw Cats, I didn't that night, I basically was like, forget all the fun work stuff or all the other things. I'm only writing about Cats. And so I wrote a story that was just like, how did they come up with the idea?

Like, I want to know who was in the room. And like basically the answer was drugs, but I didn't want to like say that. And so I was like, how did this happen? And I walked out mesmerized by the production because the talent in 2016, that cast was incredible. Like, that is an incredible group of people who were extremely talented. You watch them, they get no breaks, they dance the whole time. I was in really great seats. So I was like blown away by like how catchy the music was, but at the same time, from a humor vehicle, the names are absurd. The plot line doesn't make sense. There's a lot of stuff that's very open for interpretation. And if you dig deeper, it gets really dark. And so I kind of was like, how did this work?

And I kind of leaned on, I saw Leona Lewis, and I was like, I just saw the X Factor on drugs, is what it felt like. And having her being the X Factor, that was my angle. I wrote this whole thing. And then again, I never thought about this show again until 2019, the trailer for the movie came out.

[8:25] Mike Abrams: And I had been doing some work with Alan Seales, who's the co-founder of the Broadway Podcast Network. And I'd been doing some work with him at Google, not at all with the podcast space, just at Google, and we became friends through doing that stuff together. And the trailer for the movie came out, and it was bizarre. If you remember that trailer, that trailer broke the internet for the day because it came out the same day as the Top Gun trailer. I remember that very vividly, and it was just like distorted images, and it was just very weird. And I think my phone that morning, I probably had at least 25 texts of random people who just because that one thing I wrote what was it three or four years before associated Cats with me because they're like they've never seen it either.

And they're like, did you see the trailer? And being so naive, I was like, well, yeah, the Top Gun trailer looks awesome. And I not even thinking about Cats. And so I saw so much about I finally watched a trailer, and I just threw up a meme that says, Grizabella is the wrong cat to die. The movie's gonna set the record straight. Welcome to my TED Talk. And it's me standing on stage at a work event, speaking at a work event, and that was my meme. I threw it up on social media. I can tell you how little I knew and how fast I did it. I don't think I misspelled Andrew Lloyd Webber's name in the post. I don't even know if I got Grizabella spelled right. Like I just I just was like, what's a thing?

And that was kind of like my punchline. And then I forgot about it, and then a couple hours later I came back and Alan had commented and said, you know, he just started the BPN at that point. He's like, hey, that's your podcast, The Wrong Cat Died. And I sat with it going, like, that's kind of funny. How do we do this? Could we make this fun? But at that point, I couldn't have named you any other cats besides MongoJerry and Rebel Teaser because they sing their name a thousand times. That's the only one I remember from walking out of the show. And so I was like, I don't know if I could do this, like, I'm not qualified to do this. And we decided to go for it, and so I worked with Alan and created the podcast, and I originally agreed to 10 mini episodes, it was gonna be a mini series leading up to the movie.

[10:26] Mike Abrams: I was going to research the cats from my perspective as someone who only has the 1998 video on YouTube as my source material and all the stuff I could read on the internet, which is a lot, and I was going to give my interpretation of the cat and why I think they're more worthy of Grizabella. And that was the original 10 episodes, which are still there. I've done a couple more. If you go back and you can hear, like, I'm learning this as I'm going. If you hear episode three, I probably don't even know who the characters are. I did them in order by the songs, so I just hit them straight in order by the songs that they sing. By episode three, I couldn't have told you anything about Mistopheles because he's later in the show. I was progressing my way through week by week with Alan and writing a 10-minute episode as my way of analyzing and kind of putting some parody on the show.

[11:18] Robert Bannon: When did you realize then that those 10 weeks?

[11:21] Mike Abrams: Okay, so you're early on BPN, you know Alan from work. Alan starts this, and hey, Alan Seales. He's, I call him my podcast boss, podcast daddy, Alan Seales. He says to you, okay, do this. This is like a joke, it's a gimmick thing. You're not even a podcaster, nor are you a theater nerd. You're just literally like have this random fluke thing that's funny, and then the movie's coming out, so it makes sense. There's a Broadway revival, the movie's coming out, the movie's a big budget, it looks a hot mess. People are gonna make this a water cooler moment, and then the movie comes out, yeah, and becomes a whole thing. When was the decision where you might was like, I'm gonna do more than 10 episodes?

[12:01] Mike Abrams: Yeah, so it was in the beginning. I basically Alan and I set out, I’m convinced Alan was using me as the um, the in their sales pitch to like why the BPN, because in the early phases, there were probably 40 or 50 shows at the time on the BPN still, and this was pre-COVID, so we were doing happy hours and all this stuff. I'd walk in, and you'd have like Elliot Maddox, who at the time was in Beetlejuice with his green hair, and then you'd have Ken Davenport, who's, you know, this extremely successful investor. Every time they would talk about the BPN, they would talk about that, like performers having like Carrie Butler, having her stuff with Josh Layman, having their stuff with other performers that they know, Ken Davenport talking about the business of Broadway.

And then it was like, and Mike over here who thinks Grizabella was the wrong cat to die. So I'm convinced I was just the other end of the spectrum for them that it was like this is the range we have, but it was a fun concept and a funny idea. So I was kind of sticking with it. I only had three goals when I started. One was I wanted the Broadway community to understand the joke and enjoy it. I wanted somebody not in the Broadway community to not get it and get mad. And I wanted to go to the opening, or I wanted to go to some version of the opening, which we didn't get to go to like the opening opening of the movie, but I wanted to, but we ended up going to like a journalistic version of it, which was still super fun.

I did have all three happen. I did have somebody get really mad at my cavity episode, which was great. They just totally missed the joke. And then I did have mostly probably people saying, like, oh, this is funny, I love the idea. So I loved it. But about, I think it was Gus, it was maybe probably four or five episodes in. Somebody from 2016, there was actually a touring person who had reached out about other stuff, and then somebody from the network was like, Well, I know a couple people from the 2016 Revival. Do you want to interview them? And I was like, absolutely. So we started doing these as bonus episodes where I would kind of be like, Okay, I just researched your character. Answer my questions for me.

Tell me what I've got wrong. One of the first ones I had was Christopher Gurr, who was Gus. I was like, Why not Gus? This is the logical answer to why not Grizabella. He came on, and I had so much more fun interviewing these people live and asking them questions and throwing theories out at them and being like, Well, why didn't you think about this? Did you ever play it like this? There were some too. Like I had Tyler Haynes pretty early on, who was the Tugger. In the research I was doing, there was this whole thing about Tugger and Skimbleshanks, and they're like, Do they like each other? Do they not? One person called out, was like, Well, there's a fan theory because of the 2016 revival. I was like, Well, I can now go ask him and answer that fan theory.

Like, I can go ask, is this true or not? It was really fun for me to start angling into all this stuff I had read that I knew nothing about, or all these things I had thought about, and was able to ask the people doing it. After I did probably the first four or five, it kind of snowballed to where they're like, Oh, you should talk to this person, you should talk to this person. They would start introducing me. Instead of me having to be like, Hey, do you want to come on and talk to me about cats and this weird, you know, like they had no idea if I'm some just weird crazy fan or what the angle was, but they would meet me, realize that this is fun and entertaining and humorous and lighthearted.

When we finish talking, I'm not gonna sit there and just pepper them with cats questions and theories. We're gonna talk about whatever else in life, because that's generally what I'm talking about most of the time. I think people had fun, and then it's really kind of snowballed and continued. I'm now 200 plus episodes in. I've met a lot of people. I've had regional productions come up to me with directors. I've heard of companies for regional where they're listening to the episodes as research for their characters. I've just had all this stuff, you know, it's just taken a life of its own.

[15:50] Robert Bannon: You are now one of the go-to places for all things cats, like yeah, like and you're here at the right time because you saw the revival. Cats is now and forever, people. That commercial was my childhood, Mike, here in New York. So now you had that, you had the revival, you have the movie, and you had the Jellicle Ball, and wherever the Jellicle Ball may be going now.

[16:17] Mike Abrams: TBD, they just created their social media and they're pushing it. The rumors are on these streets about more cats, you know, on Broadway. So now that Mike, you have all of this, has there been moments where you've interviewed people that have come on your show that you were like in awe of, shocked that these people would come and talk to you about cats?

[16:37] Mike Abrams: There's definitely a lot. Some have been like just random fans who just are also been huge, like DJ John Michael, who's the Peloton DJ. He's been one, you know, we've stayed in touch where I was like, how does he, he commented on everything, liked everything? He was like super, he just grew up loving cats. So there's those, but then there's also the performers, and now especially as I've gotten more involved in the Broadway space and have gone to more shows since I've moved here. A lot of times I'm shocked that this, like, oh yeah, this person was in cats, and they are now doing this show, and it's really fun to cross-promote the two of like let's actually cast the cats into your ex show that's out.

I've had a blast with it. I think what's also funny though is that my knowledge of Broadway is so specific to basically 2016 forward. I'll have people that will have these legends from Broadway or from, you know, cats in the early Broadway days, and they'll say the name. I'll be like, I have no idea who you're talking about. My cat's knowledge is the plot and the story, and that's about it. I learned a lot of other stuff, but my knowledge is purely about the character development, the arcs, the story. If you told me a dance routine number, I couldn't tell you about it. If you told me about the key it's in, couldn't tell you anything about it. I know just that. I've had some awkward moments where I've accidentally talked to somebody and be like, Oh, you were in it in the 90s. I had no idea.

[18:11] Robert Bannon: Well, what I love is your approach to it. It's what made it fun in doing an interview because I think as an actor and as somebody who went to acting school and did a lot of musicals, like there's a kind of unspoken, not about cats, but in theater in general. There is a, you have to let go of the disbelief of the show and just enjoy it for what it is. But you and your analytical brain and coming from technology and coming from marketing, you went and saw the show, and like I have to figure out what the hell I watched, and I want to know why she is she dead, what happened to her, should she have been? You took an approach to it where you really sat down and figured, and that is hysterically fun and is so entertaining to hear you ask these guests their theories and what they think of the plot of this show.

[19:01] Mike Abrams: I grew up loving sitcoms, I still love sitcoms, and that's kind of where my brain thinks that way, which is where you have your A line and B line, and then at the end, A and B come together, and there's some fun kind of connections that tie the two. Cats gives you none of that. That's where I'm kind of like, what is my A line and B line, or what is my, so I tried to add my own version to comprehend it because that's the way my mind works. It doesn't exist, so it's fun to ask people about that. Did they think about that? Do they think about those things? Because on one hand, it's like I'm thinking about it from the acting character development side. On the other hand, they gotta go out there and dance these numbers and sing and hit the marks and not kick their, you know, their friend in the face when they're doing a turn.

A lot of stuff is like they've never thought about it, and they shouldn't because it's not necessary in their world, but it's really fun for me and the super fans who have tons of theories, and honestly, there's a lot out there on the web. I now have added to the lore myself, but if you really go like the super fans, first of all, they're hilarious, like they're very creative and clever people. There are some amazing cats artists too. They are very talented people in this space that are cats fans, like cosplayers, artists, writers. There is an entire fan fiction site I found when I was doing it for the Mistopheles episode because I was really looking for the Tugger and Mistopheles story, and it's like all the fan fiction.

I found like hundreds of, if not thousands of stories, and these aren't just like, oh, I wrote a couple paragraphs of a story. I found one that was almost 30 chapters, it was like 15,000 words. I mean, it was like a book, like if you printed it out, it would have been a book. I read some of it and then I was like, I gotta, I have a life, I gotta put this down. But it's crazy.

[20:49] Robert Bannon: I mean, there's a lot out there. Well, Mike, if I was gonna go to Broadway Con this year, I would want to dress up like—I mean, I don't know if I have the body for the leotard, right? At this moment, but I think it is the perfect cosplay. I mean, you're gonna be the Phantom of the Opera or you're gonna be a cat.

[21:03] Mike Abrams: Yeah.

[21:04] Robert Bannon: If you go to—we had three cats this year show up to our Broadway Con panel. Yeah, we had three cosplayers who were, I mean, in great costumes. I mean, they looked like they should be ready to go on the show. And if you want to hear Mike's Broadway Con episodes, you could also hear us bootleg your Broadway Con episodes at your Broadway Con. Because my cousin Adrian went with her husband John and recorded clips of your Broadway Con episodes and interviewed, and we stole all of your guests from your panel to then do my show in the hallway, because that's how gritty and unprofessional we are.

[21:40] Mike Abrams: I mean, this year was great. We had Bill Roush, who's the director from Cats: Jolkaball, and then we had Silk, Sidney, and Dudney, who were three—It was the Mistoffelees, the Tugger, and the Monkish Trap. And they, I mean, they're just unbelievable performers, really, really great, great people. And so it was so fun to have them back because I did a ton of episodes during the run with Cats: Jolkaball, including that was one that kind of blew my mind, Zondre DeShields. I sat with him on his throne. Like we were on the stage on his throne, and we did the whole video for it. So the video exists for that one, and that guy's mind works like nothing else. He's a fascinating human being.

[22:17] Robert Bannon: Um, but I did a ton of episodes with them, and it was so cool to be kind of early on supporting them and helping them, and then of course they didn't need me. That show took off like nothing before. Um, but that was a cool intersection, too, of they kind of took the story and added some more storytelling to it by adding the ballroom components. So a lot of people that like don't get Cats, if you're the person that doesn't get Cats or didn't like it because you didn't follow it, understand it, which is a totally fair criticism. This is why the Cats haters, to me, I get it. I can totally understand why it's not for everybody. You should see that version if and hopefully when it comes back, because that version gives you Cats, but in a way that's a little bit easier to digest. And it was so well done. So I'm excited. I hope it gets— I hope it's official. It seems like it's teasing its way into another gel life.

[23:08] Mike Abrams: Me too. And I know you'll be working with them, and I'm sure there'll be lots more episodes of the podcast. And when you watch the pod—when you listen to the podcast, everybody, including an episode with me. With you, my controversial opinions about Cats. Like, do I think Grizabella should have died? I answer. And then who do I think should not? Who's my favorite cat? It's a controversial answer as well. Me and Mike do not always agree on my choices. There are some hot takes, but I love it. That's what I love about it. I love when I learn a new theory or a new take or something else, because you can add so much to the show and not change it. And that's what it makes it—I mean, I have one episode coming out in a couple weeks after where someone gave me a totally different view of what they view the whole like jellicle means.

And so there's just all these different times where it's like, oh, I never thought about that at all that way. And that's fun to kind of have those different stories captured. And I feel like at this point I've become a historian where I'm just like, I'm getting different people from every production. I think I'm over 30 productions, different productions, and I try to always grab a new one every once in a while where I'm like, all right, I haven't talked to anybody from this obscure, like international tour from the late 90s and try to find them so I can have their version added to the lore.

[24:30] Robert Bannon: That is what is insane to me. It's so crazy. I'm obsessed with the whole idea. So we tell us, we firstly, everyone knows you can go—you gotta go to the Broadway Podcast Network. You can have the app, you can go to the website, you can listen to us on Spotify, you can watch us, whatever, wherever you get your podcast, you make sure you find BPN and be a part of it. Secondly, when do your episodes come out?

[24:46] Mike Abrams: So usually every Tuesday or every other Tuesday, just depending on—I take some weeks off depending on my personal busy work life, as you mentioned. But yeah, I'm the wrong cat died. I'm the wrong cat died on every social media channel. I post mostly on Instagram, but I definitely have all of them. And so yeah, you can check us out there, follow, come listen, come download. They're on every podcast platform, they're on the BPN's website. And then, as I always say for everyone else too, if you have people that were in Cats or you did it regionally, or you've got a thought or an angle, I'm always open to hearing different takes on this. It's what makes this very fun. And I know that sometimes you have—you said to me behind the scenes like Cats fans are very serious.

So, like, we—you—this is in love, and I love—I said to you, the music in this show is iconic, and the work that is done in this show is iconic. And we have a deep conversation about Broadway, my introduction to the show, and then also the movie and our takes on that, and the Jellicle Ball. So it's for everybody who loves Cats in any iteration. It's for all of it. It's for theater, it's for movies, it is for the new Cat, it's everything.

[25:55] Mike Abrams: Yeah, and my episodes, you get a wide range. You get some people that go really into their acting process, you get a lot of fun stories from times on tour. I've got a few Cats couples, whether it's a husband or wife or husband and husband who met on tour. It's really fun to see if their characters should have been people dating or not. Like that's always a fun angle. So I've had kind of—I've had families where daughter and dad did it, a wide range of different types of stories. So even though the story's always gonna be centered around Cats, you're gonna get a different flavor basically depending on who you listen to.

[26:29] Robert Bannon: Do you have a cat?

[26:32] Mike Abrams: I don't. I don't. I travel too much for work to have any animals in New York City.

[26:36] Robert Bannon: Well, now we're upset. I gotta buy you a cat.

[26:40] Mike Abrams: I wouldn't know. I would have so much trouble. I would want to name them after all the cats. I wouldn't be able to pick just one.

[26:45] Robert Bannon: Right. So which—my hot take question—if you were to have a cat, what character from Cats would you name it after?

[26:52] Mike Abrams: What's funny is I probably would—I don't know because I would change. I would probably change depending on one male or female I gotta decide. And then it would probably be Tugger. I think Tugger is kind of the most—I had a little bit of trouble with—when I started this podcast, I was like, oh, it'll be funny to make my name for my email address the Rum Tum Tugger, and because of that it goes to spam for everyone because it looks fake. So I had to finally change that, being like, I can—I'm more professional than the parody of this. I actually do run this, like, you know, I can handle the emails back and forth, but it was kind of fun. The real answer though is I'd probably name them after an Indiana Pacers player because that's the reality of my life is I would probably name a cat or a dog after an obscure basketball player, because that's what I watch most days.

Like Reggie Miller, Reggie Miller, Reggie Miller's is the famous one, but yeah, there's a lot of other very random ones that I would—I just wanted you, Mike, to know that this little theater gay knew an Indiana piece.

[27:52] Robert Bannon: You know what? Yeah, you're living in Detroit now, you gotta know the Pacers. We have some history there. It's opening day here as well for the Tigers, and that's apparently a very big deal here. Just like opening day for the Pistons is a very big deal. And for me, opening day over at the Fisher Theater for the Book of Mormon tour was my version of all of this.

[28:09] Mike Abrams: So we all love the Book of Mormon.

[28:12] Robert Bannon: Great show. Great fun show. We had a lot of fun.

[28:14] Mike Abrams: Well, and I love that you're now—you're part of Broadway even though you'll be more— you'll be excited to watch a Pistons game and be a sports fan, but also that theater has crept—that just shows you that there's a little bit of everything for everybody. We all need a little art, a little sports, a little everything.

[28:35] Robert Bannon: I think people should just be open to whatever makes people happy. If it makes you happy or makes somebody else happy, enjoy it as long as it's not harming somebody else. And I think that's what's great. Like, I'm not a baseball fan first as a sports person—not my favorite sport. I grew up playing hockey, which is so much more fast-paced. Love basketball, but I love going to theater and I love going to watch concerts. I mean, you can enjoy multiple things, and that's fun. Let people have their fun.

[28:48] Mike Abrams: Absolutely. Well, we're gonna be listening to your podcast, The Wrong Cat Died, everyone. You're gonna—we're gonna follow it, we're going to be watching it. You can check—we're scheduled. I think this interview is out the day that my—we're gonna all be out, me and Mike. I'm talking to Mike, Mike's talking to me, we're talking about Cats, we're talking about our journey, our story, our shows, our work, our what we do over here, and I'm just proud to share you, my BPN brethren. We get to share this platform and hopefully spread some joy about art and theater out here for the people in the streets.

[29:30] Mike Abrams: I love it. So fun to always talk to other people on the BPN because we all have a connection there, but we all have very different thoughts and different stories and different types of shows. And it's really fun to kind of experience all the different versions of the same. And I love your process and getting to see your show and how you edit your show and how you do your show, the questions you ask in your style versus other people's and mine. It's such a fun, it's such a creative, fun thing, community, and I love being a part of it.

[29:55] Robert Bannon: I love it. I wouldn't be here without them. I mean that. They made the original ask. They're the whole reason I would have never done it without a network. And so I owe a lot. I always joke. A lot of times when I have a very fun but obscure thing, like when we did the Andre De Shields, and when we walked in and we were going on stage, Alan was there with me filming it, and I just looked at him and I was like, "Alan, this is your fault." I was like, "We're here. This is your fault that we're here because without your reply, we wouldn't be here five years later with this ridiculous and insane opportunity to interview him."

[30:28] Mike Abrams: It was meant to be.

[30:30] Robert Bannon: It was meant to be. Well, everybody check out the podcast and always support BPN. You know, you can just download it and listen to a new podcast literally every day. There's so much content on here. And I'm excited for people to check out this episode and our episode on your podcast, and my show is your show anytime.

[30:47] Mike Abrams: Awesome.

[30:47] Robert Bannon: It was so fun. When Cats comes back, I'm going to see it with you.

[30:49] Mike Abrams: I'm thinking it's on me.

[30:51] Robert Bannon: Come into town. We're going.

[30:53] Mike Abrams: All right, deal.

[30:53] Robert Bannon: That's a promise. Thank you so much for being here.

[30:55] Mike Abrams: Thanks for having me.