For Trent Stork, directing a circus-themed revival of "Cats" at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, Illinois, just made sense.
"I think it's the third verse that we sing of the first song, which is, 'We can dive through the air like a flying trapeze / We can turn double somersaults / We can bounce on a tire," they said. "It's the song of the Jellicles saying, 'These are all the things that we can do.' And [that's] what screams 'circus' to me."
"Cats," with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is based on T.S. Eliot’s collection of poems, “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." The show opened on Broadway in 1982 and ran for 18 years.
Since then, it has become somewhat of a divisive musical, with many lauding Lloyd Webber's score and whimsical nature and others critiquing its plot.
Stork describes the musical as a series of "vignettes of cats."
"The plot is pretty loose," they said. "You could say it's that they are cats, and they are seeking to be chosen as the Jellicle choice, which means you get to come back to a new Jellicle life."
But more than anything, they said, "Cats" is a "showcase of talent," which Stork said made it perfect for a circus revival.
"It was important that when we did circus cats that we just continued that identity, that we made it entertainment and that each cat had its own feature," they said.
To bring Stork's vision to life, they collaborated with circus choreographer and founder of Actors Gymnasium Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi.
"Circus is very similar to the culture of theater," Hernandez-DiStasi said. "It's only as good as the sum of its parts, so, not just the circus people working together, but everybody coming together and being supportive and saying, 'Yes,' I'll do that."
Hernandez-DiStasi enlisted the circus talents of some of her former students to perform many of the acts in the show, including Spanish web, trapeze and even a Cyr wheel.
But she said even some of the non-circus-specific performers learned the apparatuses and are involved in many of the high-level circus acts.
"They really just got blended, which is, I think, the most amazing thing about our 'Cats,'" she said. "It's not like, here's the circus people and here's dancers and singers. They are blended seamlessly."
It's what she said makes the show so captivating, whether or not you love circus or "Cats."
"If you're like, 'I just want to see the circus,' you're going to fall in love with the cats. And if you're like, 'I just love 'Cats,' you're going to fall in love with the circus," Hernandez-DiStasi said.
Though, for many, "Cats" and circus are a match made in heaven.
"It just combined everything that I love: 'Cats' and circus," said Selena Audrey, theater lover and content creator who has more than 12,000 followers on her TikTok account @theaterwithselena.
Audrey, who is based in New York City, said the Paramount’s circus-inspired production of "Cats" was a "must-see" for her, so once she found out about it, she quickly booked a flight to Illinois.
"It seemed like a no brainer,” she said. "It seemed that I had to go. It actually didn't matter where this was in the country."
Then Audrey posted on her TikTok to tell her followers about the show and that she had bought plane tickets and booked a hotel just to see it.
"There's a circus-themed production of 'Cats' happening in Aurora, Illinois, and guess what I did? I bought a flight, and I bought a hotel, and I will be going to see this circus version of 'Cats' the musical," she said in a video posted last week. It has more than 50,000 views and hundreds of comments.
She said she didn't expect it, but her video garnered the interest of other theater and "Cats" lovers. Now, the Paramount's production of the show has been a relatively hot topic on "theater tok" and other social media channels.
In fact, a recent video posted on the Paramount's TikTok page about the show has more than 30,000 views and dozens of comments from fans requesting a livestream and "proshot," or professional shot, of the show.
Audrey says the growing popularity of this specific production of "Cats" shows that fans yearn for original work, even if it is simply a reimagined version of an already-beloved show.
"The whole purpose of theater is to change lives," she said. "You're not going to change somebody's life by copy and pasting something that happened 20 years ago. You're going to do something new so that other people are saying, 'That's what theater is, and that's what theater can be.'"
The Paramount Theater's production of "Cats" is playing in Aurora, Illinois, now through June 15. For tickets, visit ParamountAurora.com or call (630) 896-6666