Nine Lives
The Jellicle Ball just landed nine Tony nominations. Here's what that looks like from inside the pit.
May 5, 2026. The 2026 Tony Award nominations were revealed.
The show I’m in got nine of them.
Best Revival of a Musical
Best Direction of a Musical
Best Choreography
Best Featured Actor in a Musical — André De Shields
Best Scenic Design of a Musical
Best Costume Design of a Musical
Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Best Sound Design of a Musical
Best Orchestrations
Nine departments. Nine crafts. Nine different teams who put something real into this production. The industry looked at all of it and said: we see it.
I want to say something specific about that last one — Best Orchestrations.
This isn’t exactly the same Cats score you remember.
The original orchestrations by Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Wilson are the foundation. But what Trevor Holder and Doug Schadt built on top of that foundation is what makes this production sound like nothing the original ever did. Trevor served as Beats Arranger and Producer. Doug was the Music Producer. Together with Lloyd Webber and Wilson, they went inside a score that everybody thought they already knew and rebuilt it from the ground up.
New arrangements. Dance grooves that sit in the pocket in a way that I genuinely look forward to every single night. I’m in that pit eight shows a week and I still feel like getting up at the bows. It’s actually really cool to hear. That’s the music doing exactly what music is supposed to do.
The whole sonic world they created lives inside the ballroom culture this production is built around. It’s not a gimmick layered on top of the show. It’s woven into the DNA of it. That’s the work that got recognized. That’s why all four of them are on that nomination together.
Trevor is a colleague of mine. I’m in that pit eight times a week. I hear what he did to this score up close. The nomination is deserved.
I’ve been in this business 26 years. I know what it feels like when a show doesn’t get noticed. When the work just disappears into the run and nobody says a word. This isn’t that.
I also know what a Tony win actually does to a show. I was at Memphis when we won Best Musical in 2010. No major stars above the title. No built-in fan base from a movie or an album. We built that audience one person at a time, word of mouth, night after night. When we won, something shifted. The visibility went up. People who had never heard of us suddenly had a reason to come. For a show like that, it mattered in a real and specific way.
Now here’s the thing about the revival category that I find interesting.
People generally already know these shows. They have a relationship with them before they ever buy a ticket. They saw the original. They heard the cast album. They know the songs. So a revival is working with a different kind of momentum than a new musical is. Cats: The Jellicle Ball pulled people in partly because they knew Cats and partly because they heard this version was something different. Reimagined arrangements. A whole new concept. A world built around the same bones but sounding and feeling like nothing the original ever was.
But here’s what the Tony race doesn’t always predict. When Avenue Q beat Wicked for Best Musical in 2004, everybody assumed that meant something. And maybe it did for Avenue Q. But Wicked is still here. It’s one of the biggest shows in Broadway history. Avenue Q eventually closed, went to New World Stages, and I know that run well because I subbed there and it was a great experience. But the trophy didn’t tell the whole story either way.
Some shows run because they win. Some shows run because people love them and keep coming back regardless. Sometimes both things are true at once. It’s complicated and it’s always been complicated.
So here’s how I actually feel about all of this.
Ragtime is on that ballot. The Rocky Horror Show is on that ballot. Both are running with full companies. Musicians, crew, wardrobe, everyone. It would be nice to see Cats win. But the truth is, I want every show on that list to stay open as long as it possibly can.
When shows run, people work. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
When an award extends a run by six months, that’s six more months on a contract for a drummer who needed it. For a bass player. For a sub who finally got their foot in the door. I know what it looks like when Broadway goes dark. I know what it feels like to watch a show close and wonder what comes next. Ain’t Too Proud closed in March 2020. The checks stopped coming. Everyone in that building went home and waited.
We waited a long time.
Then the shows came back. Ain’t Too Proud reopened in the fall of 2021 with the rest of Broadway. And then we closed again in January 2022.
I didn’t have a Broadway show again until Cats: The Jellicle Ball.
That’s four years. Four years of figuring out what you are when the thing that defines you isn’t available. I kept moving. I did a million things in between. I taught. I built Broadway Drumming 101 into something real. And the thing I’m most proud of from that entire stretch is finishing Broadway Bound and Beyond — a book I wrote because I didn’t want anyone else to go through those four years without a roadmap.
So when I say I want every show on that ballot to run, I mean it the way someone means it when they’ve been on the other side of it. Not as a sentiment. As a fact about how this industry works and what it costs when it doesn’t.
Congratulations in advance to whoever wins. What I care about most is that we’re all working. That the curtain keeps going up. That the musicians in every one of those pits gets to keep doing this.
And if you’re reading this trying to figure out how to get into one of those pits yourself, that’s exactly why Broadway Drumming 101 exists. I want to help you get there. And I want you to stay there.