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CATS HISTORY AND FACTS
1. CATS opened in London's West End on May 11th, 1981 in the New
London Theatre.
2. CATS opened on Broadway on October 7th, 1982 in the Winter Garden Theatre.
3. Gillian Lynne was the choreographer and Trevor Nunn was the director.
4. All the songs from CATS (except memory) were all once poems from Old Possum's Book of
Practical Cats.
5. Marlene Danielle has been in the Broadway cast since the show started. She was an understudy at first, but after year she has been playing a permanent role of Bombalurina.
6. The whole Mistoffelees dance was filmed for the video, but they just didn't show it all in the video.
7. On June 19th, 1997 Cats did its 6,138th performance and became the longest running Broadway show in history.
8. There was a bomb threat on the opening night of CATS in London. It says in a book "A bomb alert cut the standing ovation at the end and forced the first-night audience and cast, still in costume and make-up, on to the streets outside. Brian Blessed strode on to the stage and took off his wig and announced 'Please leave the theatre now, quickly and orderly. We have been told there is a bomb in the theatre. This is serious.' There really was no bomb there.
9. Judi Dench was going to play the
oringinal London Grizabella, but then when she tore her Achilles' tendon in rehearsal,
Elaine Page became Grizabella.
10. On September 26th, 1888, T.S. Eliot was born in America.
11. On March 26th, 1948, Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in England.
12. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats was published in October, 1939, in England.
13. "Demeter" was a goddess in ancient Greece, of agriculture.
14. CATS has spawned five touring companies that have played to more than 25 million people in all 50 states except Vermont.
15. CATS has played in: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Canada, Broadway, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Ireland, and England.
16.CATS became the first major Western musical to play Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Since the original production of CATS
opened:
17. THE BOX OFFICE have used 58.8 miles of adding machine paper, 875,160 paper
cups, 35,125 headache pills and 1,450,440 envelopes.
18. THE SOUND DEPARTMENT have used 30 new mikes a year (510) in total, 50 new
aerials a year (850 in total) and 50 batteries a week (44,200 in total).
19. THE STAGE MANAGEMENT have used 1,000 cups a month, 2,000 elastic bands andover 200 loo
rolls a year, a total of 6,528 pints of milk and 449,250 throat pills for
the company.
20. THE STAGE ELECTRICS DEPARTMENT have changed 26, 265 bulbs in the
auditorium (there are 1,663 bulbs: 30 are changed per week, each has been
changed roughly 12 times) and used 22,405 ft of cabling.
21. ‘MEMORY’ had air time on radio and television in the UK with over 52,571
plays
(7,000 plays in the first 6 months). There have been over 100 different versions and
recordings. Air plays in the USA passed the 1 million mark in 1988 (BMI). If you
listened to the song continuously 1 million times it would take 5 years.
22. CATS won seven Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Featured Actress, Outstanding Costume Designer, Best Score Of A Musical, Best Book Of A Musical, Oustanding Lighting Designer, and Oustanding Director Of A Musical.
23. CATS won a Grammy Award for the original cast album selling more than 2 million units.
24. CATS has used 3,247 pounds of yak hair for wigs and tails, 28,148 wig caps, 2,558 pounds of hairpins, 6,938 knee pads, 270 gallons of makeup remover, 33,359 subway posters, and more than 1.8 million pounds of dry ice for fog/cloud effects.