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[0:00] Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ariana Grande, Hi, I'm Cynthia ARIBO, and you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Visit vpn.fm to discover more.

[0:12] Mike Abrams: Thanks everyone for listening to this episode. I want to give a quick disclaimer before we start the show. I had Dr Laura cable on who was an amazing episode. But two things to note, one was, this was recorded at the end of June, which was before we started doing the pro Moon Performing Arts Center episode. So just note that the timing of this was a little bit ago. And the other thing to call out is, I found out that while we were recording virtually. I had COVID at the time, and so you can definitely hear that in my voice. Either way, Laura was amazing, and you are going to love this episode. So thanks for listening, and let's start the show.

[0:51] Speaker 2: There's a cat over here. There's a cat over there. I'm a wrong one night. I'm a wrong one night. You Music.

[1:07] Mike Abrams: Welcome to the wrong cat died the podcast. Make down the cats atrophy. I'm your host, Mike Abrams, and today we have another amazing guest. She was Joey Lorem on the US national tour, five of cats. So welcome Laura cable and thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have you bear with me, everybody, as I'm battling through a flu, type of cold. So my voice is a little shot here, but it's still a good time and a good day to talk about cats. So we're gonna power through. So I always like to start with the beginning. Where was your history to cats? Like, what was the first introduction for you? Believe

[1:39] Speaker 3: it or not. It was a record. There were some there were some musicals. There were some albums that, for some reason, at the cable household, were on record. They were not on cassette tape. We absolutely listened to the record of cats first, before I ever saw it in the theater, and I did see it in a theater, I was lucky enough to grow up in Detroit, where we had amazing first national tours, coming through all the time. And I did, as a very, very young girl, have the opportunity to see it, but before I even saw it, it was on the record. And so I was sort of making up my own stories, and someone with a very vivid imagination, and I sort of had my own version of what cats would be like before I ever saw people in front of me in cat costumes, yeah? My own story. And I can still remember the texture, because the record has a very different texture than a cassette tape, than an mp three now than you know anything. And I remember that it kind of added to the spookiness or the intrigue of the show to hear it on record. Like, Ooh, it was something special, yeah? My first introduction, yeah, it's so

[2:42] Mike Abrams: interesting. Because, like, there is this debate of, do you listen to a cast album before you go, or do you just go in blind? And I've always done the reverse, like I I want to hear, I want to hear the whole thing together the first time, and then I listen to it a bunch after but, and I'm that

[2:58] Speaker 3: way now too. Yeah, absolutely, I really am, because I even when Hamilton was sweeping the nation and everybody knew every word to it, I was just like, I'm gonna be a holdout. I know this sounds silly, but I'm gonna be a holdout because I want to experience the show before I hear the soundtrack. I'm the same way. Yeah, be along for the ride. But did

[3:15] Mike Abrams: you even recognize, because I was assuming you're a kid at this time, that that was like a musical, or is it just like one of the albums being played in your household with, like, some rock or whatever else was being mixed in good question, for

[3:25] Speaker 3: some reason I understood that one was a musical and that our chipmunks, one was a TV show, and that, like I somehow put together, like I understood the buckets I didn't understand at the time, that There were people that night, because, I mean, the considering when in the 80s, that the show came out already at that point, every day of my life, because I was born after cats every day of my life, I didn't realize that there were actors doing the show actively somewhere in the world. That part I didn't get. I just knew that it was on my record and that we were gonna go one night to see it, but I didn't realize it was still happening every night. That part was a little metaphor, but I understood it was

[4:08] Mike Abrams: a music for sure. I asked because my mom's a piano teacher, and she plays a piano, and for the longest time, I didn't recognize that that song was in a musical or just a rock song or something else. I was just a classical piano piece. It was just all music to me. And it honestly wasn't even until COVID, when I was home and the piano tutor started playing memory, and I was like, Ah, now I realize why I know this song even more. And so it's like little things like that, where you just kind of get the the pieces of it. But so you did get to see the tour in Detroit. This would have been the third tour, I'm assuming, the first national

[4:40] Speaker 3: that would make sense. Yeah, it probably was. And I don't remember much about the experience, except that I loved it. I was a very scared audience member in general, and I remember being scared by cats. For some reason, I was just like, we're good here. Like I didn't mind that cats were jumping out in the audience. We're in the green eyes and stuff. Not at all. Was just like, we're good here. This is great. It's just like, the record, yep, yep. I thought nothing was weird about this at all. Loved it about how old

[5:09] Speaker 3: must have been four or five. Oh, so really, yeah, yes. And I do have a lot of long term memories from when I was that age. First time I was on stage, I was three, and I have vivid memories of that. So, like, I have no doubt that this memory, you know, it checks out that I was there and I saw, yeah, and it was most likely one of my first times in a theater watching anything. I believe, and I'll have to, you know, check with my parents on this one, but I believe I was on stage before I ever saw a musical, because three is very little. You can't even sit through anything at three. Yeah, I was a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz High School production. Like, you know, similar to you, my dad was a music teacher, and his high school that he taught at was doing the Wizard of Oz, and he had two little munchkins at home. My sister myself, we'll put him on stage, and we're like, what's the musical? He's like, you'll go find out. I was like, Okay, thanks along for the ride again. Just it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be all right, but, yeah, it was probably one of my first times actually sitting in a theater. That's

[6:09] Mike Abrams: amazing. Yeah, it is really interesting that because of you, at that point, you've heard it enough, but you don't recognize it, and then you're going to see it. You're still too young to kind of get all the craziness that comes with that show 100% it is interesting to say you weren't scared, because, like, as an adult, I was terrified.

[6:30] Mike Abrams: familiarity with the music too.

[6:32] Speaker 3: That's fair. That's fair. Maybe, maybe that helps. Yeah? Okay,

[6:35] Mike Abrams: so then you, you know, you go through your high school, you do all this stuff, and then when do you get cast as jelly Alan fit to her? So

[6:43] Speaker 3: this would have been in January of 2010 and again, I was already in the habit of auditioning all the time. I think we don't talk about it a lot, but to be a female musical theater performer as opposed to a male one. You go on so many auditions and they equal nothing. You know what I mean? This is numbers game. And so I was at that point auditioning all the time. I did not think that this was going to be my big break. I wasn't particularly nervous. I was like, I have three auditions today. One of them is for the cats national tour. Okay, I'll go, you know, no big deal. But I remember the audition so vividly, because obviously it changed my life. Going on that tour broadened so many things, not just in performance, but it brought some of the best people in my life to me. So anyway, that audition turned out to be super important, but it was for an emergency replacement track, and that means you don't have 1000 women there. They're very specific in the breakdowns. When it's an emergency replacement, it's like, can you leave town basically in a week? Do you fit? They were looking for an cover to cover both jelly Loram and Jenny, anydad, that particular actor was going to leave in a couple weeks, and they needed somebody right away. So there were only women there, and there were not 1000s. There were probably less than 100 and I know that still sounds like a big number, but I promise you, it's not less than 100 and you're warming up because they wanted everyone to dance first. And I vividly remember talking to someone who I've been auditioning with for years. At that point, I knew that she was great too, because you can always hear each other singing before me. I remember just saying to her while we were warming up. You know, the crazy thing about today is that someone's actually gonna get a job. Yeah. And she was like, What do you mean? They need someone? This isn't just a required call. This isn't to be in someone's files. They need someone in two weeks. So, like, look around, like someone's gonna get this job. And she's like, Whoa. That's a great perspective. It turns out it was me, but I was that wasn't on my radar at all. I was just looking around thinking, this one's different, yeah, join the national tour of cats like in two weeks. Huh? Again. Did not think it was my turn at all, and my background being a stronger actor and a stronger singer than I am a dancer. I didn't think cats would happen for me. I didn't know that cats has a variety of skill levels when it comes to dance, and I couldn't have, you know, in retrospect, I couldn't have built a more perfect track than the one that I eventually was in the path from being an off stage vocal swing, only covering two cats for basically a solid year, and then going into jelly lorm full time. It ended up being perfect. But for anyone who knows cats and loves the characters, Jelly Lorem is the storyteller, so it's just like, whoa, whoa. And yes, of course, she needs to dance. And yes, I did fine with the dancing, but I didn't think that I had the capabilities, and it turns out I had exactly what that character needs. And so we started with dancing in the audition. And it wasn't the crazy stuff. They didn't want to see the Jellicle Ball because they were just like, let's not scare anybody away. Let's do this section. And I remember, it's this section of the choreography that's called ritual. But. And it's slow and controlled, and every movement has a meaning. And I think that's what they wanted to check in with all of us, to be like, what are their facial expressions like? Can they take direction to turn their head on the three and musically, it's just Jellicle cats come out tonight. Jellicle cats, come one, come all. It's a very slow version of the music that we all know. And everything has a movement, and it just wasn't, it wasn't scary, because it was taught in a very kind, gentle way. And again, they wanted us to get a job. They wanted one of us, yeah, when that phone call came in saying that it was me and that I needed to leave in about a week, it was just a no brainer. Yes. I was like, Yes. Like, this feels right to just, let's see where this journey leads. I didn't know that I would be on tour for two years. I didn't know that I would do it regionally. I could not have dreamed the friends that have brought me the travel experiences. My gosh, we spent two weeks in Hawaii. You know what I mean? Like, I couldn't have dreamed any of that in that moment. I was just like, Yeah, this seems like the next right thing. I'll be a cat. Let's see what happens.

[11:05] Mike Abrams: It's so fascinating, as someone who has a very traditional nine to five job, to hear you say the like, audition process is, like, it's just a numbers game, like, we're just going to every everyone you can. And you know now it's changed even more now with like, a lot of them being done virtually, or like a tape, yes, but to hear that versus, you know, there's the I heard the a couple different ways. It's like, it's either that or it's a I grew up catch. Was my dream. I got it. I went to every single one of those versus, like, it's one of three that same black is crazy. Exactly,

[11:36] Speaker 3: yes, exactly. I only auditioned once, and that, and that is not the case for other companies that I ended up working for. I worked for the Walt Disney Company A few years after my time with cats, I auditioned for them for seven years, and then other girls walked in, and they were like, no, just first time. I almost didn't believe them, but I said, No, that was me with with cats, because I was exactly what they needed, and I had the ability to pack my suitcase and join them for two years with one week's notice. Yeah,

[12:05] Speaker 4: narrowing it down, who's ready to go, who can, who can hop on the plane immediately, yes,

[12:12] Speaker 3: and go to Pittsburgh on january 26 I remember like, it's like, Oh, I've always wanted to go to Pittsburgh in January.

[12:19] Mike Abrams: Yeah, I love Pittsburgh. I do too. Actually, we're not gonna hate on Pittsburgh. I'm from the Midwest, and we're gonna I do like asking where, what parts of the other country you enjoyed or didn't enjoy. But Pittsburgh wouldn't be one. I would assume it's a beautiful part of the

[12:33] Speaker 3: country. It actually is. And coming from Detroit, there is, there is a mindset that is so similar. There's American class, like, oh, there's no ego in either of those cities. So I was like, I felt right at home in Pittsburgh. Yeah,

[12:44] Mike Abrams: that's great. Okay, so let's talk about the tour. You mentioned a couple things that I heard, which is, you got to go all over. You went to Hawaii. You, I mean, you, you did two years, and you started emergency cover, and then you were doing jelly lorm and Gen antidots, but then you took on the full time role for jelly alarm after correct, I want to hear a little bit about as an emergency cover when you're jumping in like, you know, partway through, how much, like, how do they prep you for that? Because there's obviously, like, the you got to go pack and be in Pittsburgh in two weeks, or whatever, less than you've got to learn the dance. So that way you don't, like, kick somebody in the face. Like, this story has a lot of depth to it. So do they go into, like, I always love how much story do they tell you when you're in that moment versus when you are full time jelly?

[13:33] Speaker 3: It's such a good question, and it was such a unique way to be introduced to the show. I did everything backwards. Yeah, everything wrong, because you're supposed to rehearse a show with the director in the room, the person who created the show. They're supposed to tell you the vision. I got none of that, but I did get it my second year, so I had the opportunity to go into rehearsals a year later, after I had been performing this show hundreds of times. You're like, Wait, that's what that meant. So the answer is very little. And what I picked up, I picked up from the other performers on the tour very slowly. So yeah, always in retrospect. And it was always like, oh, I should have added that into my performance. I should have. And then after a while, you stop, to stop living with that regret, and you just say, Oh, well, when I go in next week, I'm gonna add that in there. Thank you. I didn't know those two characters knew each other. Thank you. Like, I just learned to let go. You just have to let it go. I am a big time perfectionist. Also had to let that go. Being a swing, you have to be so pleased with a B plus performance even though you wanted an A plus, you know what I mean? Like, I learned that lesson on that tour of like, Whoa, that that's a two hour and 40 minute musical. I made three mistakes in two hours and 40 that's incredible. Yeah, that's astounding. And next time I'm gonna make two mistakes, you know, they be like, Whoa. So yes, my experience as an emergency replacement is that you learn the whole show from the dance captain. Yeah. And in my case, our dance captain was fantastic. Had been with the company a very, very long time. However, he had been with the company so long that he was speaking cats lingo. Yeah, you know what I mean. So I learned the whole the whole show in Pittsburgh in a dance studio that was a part of the theater. And then while the show was happening, I would run the show behind the cats on stage. The the theater itself was very deep, so they would tape out a little area for me that was the size of the stage, basically. And I got to do cats by myself every night, just behind the plane company, which is cool, yeah. But again, I'm all alone. I'm not primarily a dancer, and I'm learning the show from someone who has done, you know, hundreds and hundreds of productions of it. So I remember, you know, taking notes and asking, like, is it okay to to write this down? Can I go get my piece of paper? And he's like, Yeah, whatever you need to do for your process. Now, it's a whole different ball game. Now we're walking around with devices that record things all the time, 2010, not. So you know what I mean, that just wasn't a thing. You weren't walking around with an iPhone that could record the whole show. I had nothing. I just had my personal notes. And my personal notes looked like gibberish because he was speaking cats lingo. So he would say, Okay, now during the Jellicle swirl, I'm gonna need to you to make sure that you look out for skimble on your right, and and then you'll, you'll, and I'm like, skimble. I was like, I just write down the word skimble. I don't know that that's short for skimble. Shanks. Never heard the word skim just like, skimble. Okay. And then he's like, Yeah. And tumble Brutus will be on your left, but he's gonna pass you midway. And I just, I remember stopping him one time being like, I don't mean to interrupt, but what color are they? He's like, Excuse me. I was like, I don't know anything. Like, what? So who? Who are these people? What would color? Okay, so skimble Shanks is orange. I was like, I thought I'm orange. She's like, No, you're gonna be yellowish orange. I was like, He's Orange orange. Okay, okay. And what, you know, just like, whoa, you don't realize. And I was like, and what is the Jellicle swirl? He's like, That's the section that comes after this. Before this. Is like, great, got it. Got it. But as as if I were a true replacement, if I were going into the role of jelly Lorem full time, I would have had a proper put in rehearsal, because that's contractually what you get when you're a swing. You absolutely do not get that. You just get put on stage for the first time, having no rehearsal. Can you even imagine, like, can you imagine what happens when you get that call like you're on tonight, and I hadn't even been at the company long enough, and it was five days, I think five or six days, I didn't know anyone's real name, let alone their you. So Was I nervous? Yes, did like the nerves subside throughout the show? No, I and I've been a swing many times since that experience, and I always tell other swings that your first time on stage is not going to be fun. You're going to be so in your head, and it's all about technically, hitting the spot so you don't hurt somebody, but the second time, oh, the second time, you feel like on top of the world, you just like, I am a superhero. Now, this is fun. I've done this once. I didn't die, but you don't know that you're not gonna die first time that you do it. So everything is new and everything is scary. And I did make two. I mean, the fact that I can even remember this all these years does prove the perfection? Yeah, I'm still working on there. Yeah, I did make two mistakes, and one of them, they were both funny, and in retrospect, because when you are in cats, you don't have all these opportunities to go off stage and talk to people and apologize, say, Oh, I was in your spot, sorry about that. Like, thanks for you don't get to really talk about it till intermission, so you have, like, a solid hour and 15 before you can make your apologies or be like, by the way, my name is Laura. It's nice to meet you. Thank you for helping me. Like I had no idea who I was at this point, but my first not even mistake was just I had never rehearsed with the actual props. And at some point when skimbles actually doing his No, no, I sound like an expert. Skimmble. Skimble Shanks is his name. Skimble Jenks is doing a song about being a railway cat. We create a train on stage. And I was told you're gonna grab this giant wheel and you're gonna you spin it, turn it around. And I never had the opportunity to actually lift the thing. My arms are very, very skinny, and I just assumed it would be, you know, two pounds. No, no, yeah, unbelievably heavy. And so I'm there, and I'm next to good old, Old Deuteronomy, who I've never even introduced myself to, and he sees I like, physically, with all of my body weight, can't even lift this thing. And he just sort of turned to me, and very slowly, he's like, hidden inside of the train. He very slowly helped me, you know, he like, put both of his hands there, and he like, showed me how to kind of do what I needed to do. And we're hidden inside, and we're not singing. Our mics are off, and skimble singing. And instead of just saying, like, you need to work on this, or being rude about it. He just, in the best Old Deuteronomy way, turned to me and he said, My dear, welcome to cats. And I wanted to call him by his real name. And I'm like, know who you are. You don't know who I am, but thank you. And then at the very end of the show. And, I mean, I felt on top of the world because I was about to be done, I was about to be able to eat to like, I didn't feel sick to my stomach anymore. I was like, Oh my gosh, you're doing the final pounce and the very end, like you've already bowed. But the final pounce, and I crashed right into Rum Tum Tugger. And clearly, I was supposed to be on the sixth, not the seven, you know, I mean, like, we're supposed to be next to each other, but we absolutely collided, and instead of just letting it go, he just really again, like, slowly, without moving his lips at all, said, You're in my spot. And then the lights went out, and I was like, Oh, the classic thing with being a swing, you do the best that you can. You you allowed the show not to be canceled that night, yeah, because you went in and did this really hard thing that most people don't even dream about, that kind of adrenaline, and I did the best that I could. And I was like, I'll take both of those stories with me absolutely.

[21:16] Mike Abrams: And you know what? The audience didn't notice those two things. So I have heard that the train is heavy, because that's always surprising. I've heard that before.

[21:28] Mike Abrams: I want to go back though to one thing that you said, said earlier because you mentioned that, like, you know, you have your swing moments, you had that where you kind of work backwards. But do you remember any of the kind of ahas you had when you did the whole rehearsal process, like, what were the things you didn't know that? When you found out, you're like, oh, wow, that's I didn't I didn't recognize that. Yes,

[21:48] Speaker 3: absolutely. So Richard Stafford was the person setting the show, and he has such a deep connection with the material and knew what every section meant. And first of all, I never did any of the felony exercises my first time around, so I was literally just Laura in a cat suit, trying my best. And I was looking around, and I saw what other people were doing, and I was mimicking it, and I was like, I think I look like a cat enough. And the second time around, having gone through a whole rehearsal period where I was learning how to specifically articulate fingers or not, in certain sections, we've decided that we use our fingers, we use our blades, we do these things we don't have thumb showing. I was like, Oh, dear. I had no idea, but I think the bigger aha moments were about the sections of the show, like when I mentioned ritual was like the part that we did. Why is ritual different than it than the naming of the cats section, naming of cats as this. But why does this follow this? And that was so beautiful to me, to be like, Whoa, I, at that point, had probably only done the show dozens of times, not hundreds, because I was a swing, mostly off stage. But I was like, whoa. I didn't realize that this is what this was. I kind of thought certain sections were up to audience interpretation. You know what I mean, of course, because I made that up and I didn't realize that, like, when Grizabella comes for the first time, this means this when, when she goes back the second time, it means that, like, what? What is her backstory? I didn't know. I was so focused on just the one cat that I was playing that I didn't have the understanding of what everybody around me was doing, and I felt like my performance got so much more nuanced second year, and also the ritual of doing that show night after night, as opposed to only once every couple weeks. Whoa. It becomes part of you. You are part of a rich tradition, and your body hurts, and you do get bored, all those things that you think will happen like it does, but there's something so beautiful about sticking with a ritual that is hard. And I'm Catholic, and I think about the routine, the ritual that we follow every week, and it's important to have rituals in our lives, whether they're in church, whether they're on the stage, there's, in my mind, there's so much overlap between those two things. I think there's a lot of spirituality when it comes to theater and cats in particular. My gosh, it's a story about many things, don't get me wrong, but one of them is about transcendence. It's about some cat being chosen to go to the next place. Like, how can you not have some sort of a spiritual connection? Yeah? So, yeah, there was a tremendous difference in learning what the different sections were. For sure. Can you

[24:36] Mike Abrams: talk about the boredom a little bit? Because I've always again as someone who has a very different job, like, Could, could not be more different doing that same thing eight times a week, or sometimes nine or 10 times a week. How do you like manage that? Like, is there a part of the process to where you do like, quirky little things with the cast to like, do that? Like, what is the process to do that? Because after a year and. At your point over a year of doing the exact same thing every night, sometimes twice a day, it has to get feel a little repetitive. To some point, 100% it

[25:10] Speaker 3: does. And for me, I tend to be a big picture thinker, and so sometimes I would fall into this trap of being like, Oh, the show is boring because I had a few moments of feeling bored. No, no, no. It was always the same moments of the show that that that would kick in. And so for me, I had to tell myself, like you're about to get to

[25:30] Speaker 4: the boring part. What are your boring parts you gotta and

[25:33] Speaker 3: no offense, because we had some unbelievable singers, but you're supposed to be my track. I was literally laying down with my head on the ground when Grizabella is singing memory, so mostly poignant moment of the show. But man, was I bored, because you have just your heart rates been going like crazy, and then all of a sudden they ask you to lay down and not fall asleep. And you're like, oh, and it's a long song. It's a

[25:59] Mike Abrams: Okay, great. This is good. This is hopefully good for my final question here, if you're, if you're saying how bored you are during memory, it

[26:06] Speaker 3: is, I have, I have no shame in admitting that. Like, you know, the song has a couple verses, you think it's over, then you're like, No, she's not having second verse. Okay, here we go. And then you have to turn around and look really interested in what she has to say. You're just like,

[26:24] Speaker 3: we had killer singers. So like, when the boredom sets in, you just listen to what they're doing, or, you know that she's sick tonight, and you're like, whoo, she just flipped into her head voice. She's so smart, yes, yes. And you're rooting for her because she's like, she doesn't know she has the note tonight, and then she has the note, and you're just like, you know, like, you can kind of separate yourself from the cat costume that you're wearing and just be like, or if it's the first time that a swing has gone on for Grizabella, you know, this is her dream. Like, oh no, wait, is boredom set in there? You You know? Yeah, something else. And I know other cats have literally fallen out asleep on stage during that part. So I know I'm alone. I love it. But, you know, it's hard when the adrenaline is there, and then all the air gets sucked out of the show, because it's just like, well, we all we stop and we do something else. But at that point you also know that the show is so close to being done. And for me vocally, because I love to sing vocally, the next thing that happens was my favorite in the whole show. So I'm just like, you're about to do that thing you love Laura. Like, don't let it show on your face. You're about to do it. And it was the Up, up, up, like the little really quiet and for jelly Lor the notes are very, very high, but the really delicate, when you're all standing in a row and you get to finally welcome Grizabella into the tribe, it's just like it's the most beautiful thing, but man, it comes after the boring thing

[27:41] Mike Abrams: follow that it is so true. I never really thought about that. Hey, you're you're dancing non stop, and then all of a sudden, it's like, just lay there while she while she sings,

[27:51] Speaker 3: and don't let your muscles seize up. Yeah, you know, like, lay in a position that you can cough. If you need to, lay in a position where you can grab that cough drop. If you need to, you need to, you have to be really strategic, because you can't move. Yeah, you've decided on a position. And if you're on your elbow and it falls asleep, that's just life. You're just, we're gonna take a quick

[28:14] Mike Abrams: break, and then we'll be back for more of the wrong cat died. Wow. I want to hear a little bit about the regional production so after tell me how that comes to life and what that experience is like.

[28:28] Speaker 3: So probably less than a year after year the tour. So it was, yeah, maybe within six months even I saw, you know, a post for a regional production of Cats. And I was just, I was like, after the tour, I thought to myself, like, once you've done it at this level, you don't want to do it anywhere else. And my body hurt, to be honest, my knees were talking to me, and I was like, I think that's it, you know? Like, you know, you're still in your 20s, and you're just like, I guess my my cats knees are gone. No, you know, you stop the tour a week later, you're running again. There all the pain goes away, and you're like, gosh, I do miss it a little bit. And oh, wouldn't it be fun to do a two month run of it and not a two year run? Yeah, I think I do want to. And so I went to the audition. And obviously have cats written all over my resume and everything. And and there were, there was one other, one other person who was on the tour with me, and we, we ended up going to the audition together, and we kind of both had that same thought of like, almost like we were auditioning them more than they were auditioning this time. Because we're like, we know this show, it's on our resume. We don't need to do it again, but we love this show. Yeah, yeah. Let's do it like, and it was almost like, is the director's heart in the right place? Do they have an appreciation for the show? I never want to do a production of Cats where the director doesn't love it and doesn't take it seriously. It is so easy to make fun of cats. It's the easiest joke in the book. Like, oh, man, I could do it with you for one hour right now. I. But I don't want someone at the helm to have any sort of a jaded perspective on it. I want to be like, This is amazing, and let me tell you what this means and what this means, and let's do it. And that was that was the case there. And I had the opportunity to do the show with so many people who had never done it before, that I found myself sharing that little bit of wisdom and kind of keeping the tradition alive. Of like, oh, this actually means this. These two cats were, you know, this is, you know, I found myself like being this sage when I knew nothing two years prior to that. Like, you know more than you think you do after doing something hundreds of times on stage. So it's very special to have the chance to do it again with just a little bit more confidence. And again, you you can't go into an opportunity like that and think that you know more than everybody else, because no, this is a different director. So it's a different vision, and your job is to is to convey the vision of that person that you're just meeting. So you can't take everything with you from the first version, but it was really special to do it again. And in this particular production, they were a little bit more lenient with the tracking, which has been so set since the 80s the tour, like they're just like your jelly Lorem. So that means you're not a very good dancer. So that means you're gonna do this on the tire. You only have to do your arms. You're like, oh, like, I do know how to do that. You don't want me to No, no, we're good. But in this particular production, they were just like, we need our strongest dancers here. Here she's gonna go on the text. I ended up dancing the whole ball in this production. And that's when I realized, like, holy cow, all my friends have been doing this for years. This is what it feels like to not have the break in the middle of the ball and, like, go backstage and get a sip of water. There was no water SIP in this production. So I really felt like, when the end of the ball hits and the music just gets really slow and goes into you feel the sweat dripping down your bra and like you feel the energy of the other people keeping you going. When you're like, Oh, it's a two show day. I don't have it. I can't finish this. You feel it from other people. And I was like, This is what I was missing, being in the back, being on the tire, yeah? And this the heart rate like this, yeah, while the music is going slow, and you're just like, catch the breath. Catch that breath. Catch the breath. Catch the breath right now. And as a little anecdote, I am doing a show right now in Colorado, and we're we're performing at 10,000 feet, and it is incredibly difficult to catch your breath at 10,000 feet. And I I'm using those skills that I learned in cats. I'm learning how to breathe when the audience is not watching you, how to be in an intense situation and not let let your face show it, let your body tension be there, but not the breath. Let the breath just be Laura. Just be me on a beautiful, sunny day, because you can't physically do some of the things you need to do. And and we never did cats at 10,000 feet. I don't think it's loud. I would think there are laws against it. We did, yeah, we did perform in some high elevation places. You know, Denver's pretty high. Ultimately, New Mexico is pretty high. And it's a swing. I knew I would be in all those performances because a lot of dancers just they would think they were okay. They would take some oxygen before and then they would not feel well, or they so you would end up getting swung and made show, or at the, you know, 10 minutes like, Oh, she's not okay. You're in. You're right. And so you know that you're gonna be asked to do this thing that you don't do every night at high altitude. So yeah, all right, give me a hit of the oxygen. Put me out there. I'll do my I'll do my best, my best b plus performance. They

[33:32] Mike Abrams: warn you, but there's no way to prep you for that. I grew up playing hockey, and I played in the mountains in Colorado once or twice, and oh my god, every time you get out there, it's like, I'll be okay, you know, like, I'm in pretty good shape and, and it's just like the first period, you're like, No, no, I'm not good. This is, this is very different.

[33:48] Speaker 3: This might be my last day on earth. Really easy to get very dramatic. I'll never play hockey again. And I

[33:54] Mike Abrams: was already playing with very, very good, talented people from there. That was like, not the skill level. I was like, wow, this is they're already good, and they're used to this. And I'm not, but it is very much

[34:06] Speaker 3: that is, that is the word for being a swing in general, and being asked to go in at a moment's notice. And for us, our our rule was eight minutes, so if somebody had some sort of an injury a sickness, that something happened to the mid show as a swing, we were told you need to be on that stage in eight minutes. And yeah, and that we tested that many times, and it was always enough time. You know what I mean? I I can think of zero examples where, where we weren't ready in eight minutes, because that was the rule.

[34:36] Speaker 4: That's like doing your makeup and everything and being 100% Yeah. And

[34:40] Speaker 3: when we were singing in the vocal booth, we would be wearing sweatshirts and jeans. We were just wearing whatever we were wearing. We were often eating back there. We were doing other you know what I mean? And then you get the call on the headset from the stage manager or the ASM, like, lower cable to the stage, please, or lower cable the dressing room. And you, you don't necessarily know what. Cat you're in for. You just looked on a little black

[35:04] Speaker 3: you're like, I think I know, who does I think I know, but you don't know what cat you're getting into. You just hear it. And honestly, I was, I was so incredibly blessed to be with a group of swings that I was with because they were total pros, and they'd all been together for, you know, at least six months before I joined the tour, and they had seen it all, any terrible thing had already happened to them, and so when they would get that call, it was just excitement. There was no like, Oh no, I'm not ready. We were so incredibly ready. Yeah, I mean, and and then you're sitting next to Felix in the booth, and eight minutes later you see him on your little black and white TV, and you're just like, he's out there. He was just next to me eating a hamburger. So cool, yeah? Well,

[35:48] Mike Abrams: I love it. Well, let's do some rapid fire here. I was able to ask the same couple questions. So one would be, if you could go on for any cat, whether you could physically do it, male, female, it doesn't matter. Just if you can go on for one night. Who do you want to go on this? Oh,

[36:03] Speaker 3: I want to be Mr. Mustafa police, if I have the skills. Yeah, absolutely put me in like I want to, I want to absolutely wow people with my fuerte turns. I want to be him. Okay,

[36:12] Mike Abrams: who are your favorite and least favorite cats personality wise?

[36:19] Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, I mean, I've got to go with jelly Lauren, because she's just sweet and all those things. I love Mungo RUP. I love Mungo Jerry, ruffle teaser, because they have, you know, they just have so much personality, and they, yeah, then I like their partnership together, that they don't try to do anything alone, that they're always had their buddy there. So yes, I am big fan of them. And as a swing, that was always our our break, that was our pee break, is that we had two pee breaks in the whole show. It was during mongorump Because we only had to sing the last four bars. We just had to sing. And there's nothing at all to be down about that. So you could pee in that amount of time. And the other one we called the macavi P because it was during the cavity. And we did not have to sing for the first, I think it was minute and a half of that song. And then we would come. And so we were like, Okay, this is our chance anyway, like Mongo ramp. There they are, two of my favorites. I never really warmed up to it. You know, as sad as it is to admit this to Victoria, to the white cat, who everybody loves, yeah, it's hot take, right? Because she doesn't have, I mean, she doesn't have a song, she doesn't have like, that moment to she's just sort of there. And everybody loves the white cat so much that whenever we would go out the stage door, you know, like people don't know who you are, which is so awesome, honestly, for the ego of an actor, it just tell you, amazing job, because the show as a whole is amazing. But at least when I was on a tour for the two years that I was out there, everyone would say, amazing job. Were you the white cat? Yeah, no. And then after a while, because the white cat was one that would really take her time to come out, I would always pass it along to her and be like, oh, all these little girls really love the white cat. She's like, Laura, why are you saying you're not the white cat?

[38:18] Speaker 3: So anyway, yeah, I've always been like, oh, that white cat. She gets all the glory. Doesn't even have to sing a song, and then everybody just wants her autograph at the end. So, yeah, we were all the white cat at some

[38:28] Speaker 4: point. I love it. Favorite song from the show. It's skimble

[38:33] Speaker 3: shanks. It really is, yeah, heavy, heavy tire. It is so different from everything else in that show. And it starts with Jingle Bells. It's like impossible not to smile. Yeah, you're sitting there, you're kind of sad, and you just hear jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle. And you know that you just get to sing this ridiculous song about a railway cat. Oh, hands down. It's my favorite.

[38:55] Mike Abrams: It is, is, I agree it's great. It's one of the it's so upbeat and fun. And, yeah, I love it.

[39:01] Speaker 3: Yes, it's in a weird time signature, too. So it's like, it just feels it feels cool, feels very atheist.

[39:07] Mike Abrams: I love it. So I always like to ask one fun one. So which cat do you think would be best in high altitude with, with you out there in Denver? Oh,

[39:15] Speaker 3: I mean, it's straight up, Buster for Jones doesn't have to do anything.

[39:19] Mike Abrams: Yeah. Okay, yeah. Just from performance wise,

[39:23] Speaker 3: yeah, yeah? Like, well, actually, he would, he would struggle, because that costume is heavy, but at high altitude, yeah, you want to be a cat. You want to go with Old Deuteronomy, probably like somebody who, who moves with great intention, but not quickly, because you can do anything slowly. Here at this altitude, you can't,

[39:43] Mike Abrams: right? Me, Buster, yeah, okay, it's

[39:47] Speaker 3: those guys, that whole, whole crew, they would be fine. They would never call out at the high altitude. They're like, what are we in the

[39:56] Mike Abrams: mountains? Okay, most important question I have argued that one. Saying that I don't think Grizabella is the right Jellicle choice, especially during that boring number where you're trying to stay awake.

[40:05] Speaker 3: Thank you. It is a boring number. I want

[40:09] Mike Abrams: to hear from you, who is your Jellicle choice and why?

[40:13] Speaker 3: Okay, it has got to be Gus. And this is not just because I spent so much of my career as jelly Lor I'm like, straight up the way that the musical is written, all of a sudden, things slow down. We've gone to intermission, we've come back, and now there's this old cat who is so old he can't even sing for himself. He has somebody else, a caretaker, literally telling you how wonderful this guy is and how his career isn't what it used to be, and he's on his last cat legs. And then we forget about him. He they're just like, sorry, Gus not your year. Like, how many more years is Gus gonna live if it's not this year? This guy is old. Like, if you're sitting in the balcony, you don't know, but if you're up close and you see the way his face is painted, you're like, This cat might not make it to intermission. How in the world is it not Gus, but it's not like, sorry, sorry. It's so rude. Don't give this man his own song. Don't give him a whole pirate number and an opera chance to go. But without letting him be the winner, it's the insanely rude. Yeah, I'll always be on Team Gus.

[41:21] Mike Abrams: I agree. I always love having I need to get more jelly worms on the show, because there's, without fail, you spend so much time basically, like, telling why Gus should be picked to not have it happen every night. Jelly

[41:33] Speaker 3: Lorem uses her song to talk about someone else. Yeah, like, we know it's not going to be jelly lorm, because she never talks about herself. She's just like, Listen, I'm that. I'm like, a solid B Lister here. I don't have anything extraordinary about me, but this guy like, I'm using my vote. I'm not voting for myself. I'm voting for Gus, yeah, and then everyone listens, and then the music just kind of shifts, and we go into, you can't compare these guys. What

[41:59] Mike Abrams: do you mean? It is, yeah, it is such a stark difference. The those two songs, Oh,

[42:05] Speaker 3: weird. They come back to back, and the audience needs it. I understand why they're structured that way. The audience needs to have that poignant moment, and then they need to release. They need to laugh a little bit. But it's like, if you think skimball Jenks is going to get picked over Gus, who's lived this whole life and is now not quite there anymore. Got another thing coming? Yeah, it's definitely guess.

[42:25] Mike Abrams: Not gonna, not gonna try to argue with you, because I agree. I will take any non grisabelle vote. So this has been super fun. I loved hearing your experience and some of the stories and the crazy swing stories and everything that comes with it. How can people stay in touch with you on social media and what you're working on?

[42:46] Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm on social media in two different ways. The first way is at Dr, underscore cable D, O, C, T, O, R, underscore cable C, A, B, L, E, and that nickname actually came from the CAT STORE. Might be worth mentioning that actually, I will share this story, even though we are wrapping up, because I think it's fun. We spent so much time in that vocal booth. And as I mentioned, the rest of the company, the playing company, as we mentioned, the people who were on stage all the time, they didn't have the opportunity to check their phones during Act One. They didn't have the opportunity to get a sip of water, none of that stuff. But we did. We were connected to Wi Fi. We had the opportunity to do things. And over time, people would start to ask me, Hey, can you look this up for me real quick? I have a little bit of a sore throat and the mild fever. Is that the clue? And I would be like, I'll let you know. Intermission, yeah, no problem, no problem. I'd go on web, M, D, and I'm like, yeah, what's your temperature? You should yeah, that's probably the flu. You probably are contagious. And then it turned into random questions that people would ask about geography, or they would ask questions about, what is the altitude going to be in Aalto, New Mexico. And after a while, they would just say, Thank you, doctor. And it became, it became, like a real nickname. We also discovered, and this is insane to me, that there was a huge uptake in the percentage of times that we as swings were going on stage when there was an actual full moon in real life. Wow. And we would joke about it because there were, there were nine of us, like in the vocal booth, and when the full moon would happen, we would sometimes all be on stage, which is wild, but always 234, of us would be when there was a full moon, and that was not happening when there was a new moon. So anyway, we had time on our hands. And I went to the stage manager, and I said, Do you keep track of when we swing in? And she said, Yeah, I got all that, all that data. And I said, Cool, I'd like to compare that with this chart of the full moon. And by the time I started doing that, people were like, Oh, Dr, cable has gone off the deep end. Like, we got to get her back on stage. She has too much time on my hands. And I was like, No, seriously, though there's this. I don't remember what the percentage was, but it was a huge increase when the actual moon was full, and I know that that's because people are crazy. See during the full moon, weird things happen. But our show is sort of about, yeah, evangelical moon. And anyway, so that really solidified the DR cable name. Anyway, that's how you can basically

[45:09] Speaker 4: Google for your your tour. I was, yeah,

[45:14] Speaker 3: because there are no pockets in those costumes. Let me tell you, keep your smartphone there to look up your symptoms. I was, I was Google. And the other way that you can keep in touch with me is my second Instagram account that is Laura cable speaks because I am a motivational speaker that speaks about resilience in the performing arts. So if anybody out there is looking for just motivational, very short motivational videos about how you keep going in this industry, when the numbers are stacked against you, when you're not feeling a lot of hope that Instagram account is for you, awesome,

[45:46] Mike Abrams: awesome. We will link both of them, and hopefully people don't start sending you symptoms.

[45:53] Speaker 3: I'm ready Dr cables in the house, so I'm happy to answer any of your call. Your call

[45:58] Mike Abrams: ready to go? Well, this has been so much fun. Thank you for sharing

[46:01] Speaker 3: your stories. Thank you so much for having me All right,

[46:06] Mike Abrams: and thanks everyone for listening to this episode of The Ron cat died, the podcast breakdown, the cat's atrophy. To follow along. You can subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, or any of us listen podcast, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, tick tock and threads if the wrong cat died or check out Alan.